Theorising International Society - Yolaspmehazem.yolasite.com/resources/Theorising International...4.2 Wendt’s typology of the methodological positioning of IR theories 81 4.3 Buzan’s

Theorising InternationalSociety

English School Methods

Cornelia Navari

Edited by

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Theorising International Society

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Palgrave Studies in International Relations Series

General Editors: Knud Erik Jørgensen, Department of Political Science, University ofAarhus, Denmark

Audie Klotz, Department of Political Science, Maxwell School of Citizenship andPublic Affairs, Syracuse University, USA

Palgrave Studies in International Relations, produced in association with the ECPRStanding Group for International Relations, will provide students and scholars withthe best theoretically-informed scholarship on the global issues of our time. Edited byKnud Erik Jørgensen and Audie Klotz, this new book series will comprise cutting-edgemonographs and edited collections which bridge schools of thought and cross theboundaries of conventional fields of study.

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Theorising InternationalSocietyEnglish School Methods

Edited by

Cornelia NavariProfessor of International Affairs, University of Buckingham, UK

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Editorial matter, selection and introduction © Cornelia Navari 2009All remaining chapters © respective authors 2009

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without written permission.

No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmittedsave with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.

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First published 2009 byPALGRAVE MACMILLAN

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataTheorising international society : English school methods /

[edited by] Cornelia Navari.p. cm. — (Palgrave studies in international relations)

Includes Index.ISBN 978–0–230–54715–5 (alk. paper)1. International relations—Philosophy. 2. International relations—Study and teaching—Great Britain. I. Navari, Cornelia, 1941–II. Title: Theorizing international society.JZ1242.T52 2008327.101—dc22 2008029967

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 118 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09

Printed and bound in Great Britain byCPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

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Contents

List of Figures vi

Contributors vii

Introduction: Methods and Methodology in the English School 1Cornelia Navari

1 International Relations as a Craft Discipline 21Robert Jackson

2 What the Classical English School was Trying to Explain, andWhy its Members Were not Interested in Causal Explanation 39Cornelia Navari

3 Constructivism and the English School 58Christian Reus-Smit

4 History, Theory and Methodological Pluralism in the EnglishSchool 78Richard Little

5 International Society as an Ideal Type 104Edward Keene

6 Theorising the Causes of Order: Hedley Bull’s The AnarchicalSociety 125K. J. Holsti

7 The English School and the Activity of Being an Historian 148William Bain

8 The English School’s Approach to International Law 167Peter Wilson

9 Law, Power and the Expansion of International Society 189B. A. Roberson

10 The Limits of Progress: Normative Reasoning in the EnglishSchool 209James Mayall

Bibliography 227

Index 240

v

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List of Figures

4.1 Krasner’s typology of how competing theories assess theimpact of norms in international relations 80

4.2 Wendt’s typology of the methodological positioning of IRtheories 81

4.3 Buzan’s continuum of international societies 834.4 The ES theoretical framework—A levels of analysis

perspective 844.5 The methodological positioning of key ES concepts using

Wendt’s typology 854.6 A power political international society—A levels of analysis

perspective 864.7 A convergence international society—A levels of analysis

perspective 864.8 A theory of history: Watson’s metaphorical pendulum 874.9 Divergent approaches relying on methodological pluralism 914.10 The historical and geographical scope of the ES framework 954.11 Two contrasting ES views of the nineteenth century

international arena 964.12 ES comparative historical case studies 976.1 The Maintenance of International Order: Bull’s Causal Model 1316.2 Changing Elements of World Society, circa 1702 and 2008 135

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Contributors

William Bain is Senior Lecturer in International Relations Theory at theUniversity of Wales, Aberystwyth. His major monograph is Between Anarchyand Society: Trusteeship and Obligations of Power.

Kalevi Holsti is University Killam Professor (Political Science), Emeritus, atthe University of British Columbia. He has written the authoritative Inter-national Politics: A Framework for Analysis, and more recently Taming theSovereigns: Institutional Change in International Relations.

Robert Jackson is Professor of International Relations at Boston University.He is the author of The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of Statesand more recently Classical and Modern Thought on International Relations:From Anarchy to Cosmopolis.

Edward Keene is Associate Professor of International Affairs in the SamNunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Technical University. He haswritten Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in WorldPolitics.

Richard Little is Professor of International Politics at the University ofBristol. He has written The Balance of Power in International Relations and,with Barry Buzan, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Studyof International Relations.

James Mayall is Emeritus Professor at the Centre for International Studies,the University of Cambridge and Director of Studies at the Royal College ofDefence Studies.

Cornelia Navari (editor) is Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University ofBirmingham and Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Universityof Buckingham. Her major monograph is Internationalism and the State in the20th Century.

Chris Reus-Smit is Professor of International Politics and head of theDepartment of International Relations, Research School of Pacific and AsianStudies, the Australian National University. He has written The Moral Purposeof the State: Culture, Social Identity and Institutional Rationality in InternationalRelations and, more recently, The Politics of International Law.

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viii Contributors

Barbara Allen Roberson is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politicsand International Studies at Warwick University. She has written JudicialReform and the Expansion of International Society: the Case of Egypt and editedThe Shaping of the Current Islamic Reform for a special issue of MediterraneanPolitics.

Peter Wilson is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the LondonSchool of Economics. His most recent book is The International Theory ofLeonard Woolf: a Study in Interwar Idealism. He is editing the Palgrave Serieson International Thought.

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Introduction: Methods andMethodology in the English SchoolCornelia Navari

A consideration of English School methods may seem a contradictionin terms. The classical English School theorists generally disdained dis-cussions of methodology. As for method, it is treated somewhat in thenature of underclothing—assumed to be there but scarcely discussed inpolite society. In a recent commentary, the realist Roger Spegele observeda ‘methodological quietism’1 while in a not so recent one, the institutional-ist Robert Keohane regretted the School’s neglect of causal propositions (or,as he termed them ‘contingent generalisations’.)2 The constructivist MarthaFinnemore, in a commentary intending to support the School’s orientation,complained that its members do not lay out their rules of evidence, thatthey neglect to specify their presuppositions, and that ‘simply figuring outwhat its methods are is a challenge’.3 These charges echo those of an earlycritic, Roy Jones, who went so far as to recommend the closure of the Schoolon the grounds that, among other things, it encouraged a methodologicalsloppiness in its followers.4

If these are its enemies, its friends do not much demur. In his introduc-tion to Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis, Peter Wilson notes the ‘highlyeclectic approach’ of his chosen thinkers, among them early English Schooltheorists, and refers to the period as ‘golden age of the amateur’.5 Belowin his chapter, he denies that method is an appropriate way of char-acterizing English School approaches at all. Robert Jackson goes further,seeming to hold that a concern with methodology is positively harmfulto the School’s cognitive goals. (In Jackson’s view, these involve under-standing social practices—see Navari as well as Jackson’s chapters—while‘methodology’ in some views has the effect of distancing the analyst from‘understanding’.) Jackson would probably consider the School’s neglect ofmethodology to be a positive boon.

These viewpoints encompass different notions of method. Wilson thinksmethod is something in the nature of a recipe, a set of instructions or rulesapplied to research, in the same manner as a set of rules might direct theplaying of a game or the baking of a pie. (He is anti-method because he

1


2 Methods and Methodology in the English School

believes that to contain the study of international relations within the braceof a set of rules is to conceal the reality of those relations. He also clearlybelieves that the original English School theorists held similar views to hisown; see Chapter 8.) Finnemore has a less restrictive view of method. In herview (and it would be the more general view), method refers to the choiceof a body of empirical material—the subject of analysis—together with theprocess by which that material is to be examined. ‘Methodology’ consistsin the explication of that choice—in formal terms, the justification of thehypothetical proposition—and the process for dealing with it, along with adetermination of what would constitute proof. By either view, however, theEnglish School is generally considered wanting.

It is true that both Martin Wight and Hedley Bull held methodologyat arm’s length, partly because both shared in the British empirical tradi-tion. British empiricists tend to associate methodology with Continental,and especially German, theorizing. More importantly, however, it derivesfrom the association of methodology with positivism6 and the positivistquest to establish a science of international relations akin to the naturalsciences.7 Both Wight and Bull were opposed to the positivist quest, albeiton rather different grounds. Bull’s quarrel was epistemologically based. Inhis defense of a ‘classical approach’, he argued that a positivist science ofhuman affairs, in the sense of a science based on direct perception anddeduction, was inadequate in explanatory terms.8 (Bull was a philosophi-cal realist; for a philosophical realist, social inquiry must necessarily startfrom a theoretical perspective, not with direct perception.9) Wight neverspelled out his objections fully, but we may detect an ontological objec-tion. For Wight, international society was the product of both subjectiveand inter-subjective understandings, understandings generally excluded inthe positivist agenda. In any event, he certainly regarded his own enter-prise to be beyond positivism, and not capable of fulfillment in positivistterms.

If the classical school disdained methodology, we should not on thataccount suppose, however, that its members did not have method. Norshould we suppose that they did not puzzle over how to achieve their cog-nitive goals. Wight developed an historical comparative method, a methodaimed at discerning large-scale, trans-national, social understandings, pre-cisely in order to demonstrate that there was substance to the idea of aninternational society. Bull, who was concerned to demonstrate how orderwas maintained in such a society, employed a loose form of structural-functionalism, which he combined with a causal method. He deducedthe purposes served by order, and then proposed the requisites of order,from which causes could be theorized.10 Other English School theoristshave developed the notion of practice, involving the interrogation of theagents’ self-understandings, in order to flesh out the norms underpinningdiplomatic conduct.


Cornelia Navari 3

Defending these methods is not the primary concern here. They have beendiscussed, and defended, in other places.11 Rather, it is to explore the sorts ofmethods that are consistent with an English School understanding of its sub-ject. In particular, it is to explore what a disciplined approach to the idea ofan international society might involve. It follows Alex Bellamy’s InternationalSociety and its Critics with a closer examination of the specific methods thatwould be appropriate to analyzing a collective enterprise of collectives, andto discerning its rules, its constitution, its political culture, and its mobilizingagents.

In undertaking such an enterprise, the editor has assumed that a unicityof method is not what is aimed at. The epistemology of the social scienceshas, in any event, rejected the notion that the cognitive goals of the socialsciences may be achieved in only one way. What she has done is to selectamong modern treatments of the classical English School the ones that seemto her the most illuminating of its methods. Secondly, she has asked contem-porary scholars working within the English School tradition or sympatheticto that tradition to elucidate their own methods. A first set of essays dealswith the methods of the classical English School thinkers and lays out theargument for methodological pluralism. A second set points to differentmethods as relevant to different issue areas. The introductory essay consid-ers the limits of methodological pluralism, and its conclusion points to someongoing lacunae in the English School approach.

Methodology in the classical English School

The first question concerns less methodology than ontology: the nature ofthe material that is of concern to the scholar and to English School schol-arship in particular. Robert Jackson has identified that material as codes ofconduct—for Jackson, the primary purpose of English School scholarship isto interrogate the practice of statespersons to discern its normative content,which he holds to be constitutive of international order. Jackson equatesorder with publicly endorsed common norms.12 Chris Reus-Smit contraststhe English School with constructivist thought and is in broad agreementwith the Jackson position. He argues that constructivist thought is broadlysociological in orientation—it is concerned with identifying social struc-tures, influence routes and popular discourses—and he outlines the differentresearch strategies that are employed by the various schools of construc-tivism. He argues that the English School is, by contrast, more concernedwith ‘practical reasoning’—with the ‘oughts’ of political life. He maintainsthat their sociological concerns are ancillary to their normative concerns.13

Richard Little has expanded those concerns to include the environmentwithin which conduct is deemed proper. He argues that international sys-tem, society, and world society—the central concepts in English Schoolthought—are not merely in the heads of the subjects. He maintains that



they are also different environments of action—different social realities or‘structures’, which exist in a dynamic relationship with one another, andwhich require incorporation into the consideration of conduct.

Navari argues that in the degree to which English School approachesare concerned with rules of conduct, they must focus on agents. Unlike‘behaviour’, rules of conduct must be consciously apprehended by the sub-ject. In terms of the distinction between causes and intentions, EnglishSchool theory will, accordingly, favor intentional forms of explanation atleast so far as a society of states is concerned. As opposed to a system, whichmay be driven mechanistically, a society constituted by rules must be pro-duced by rational subjects with intentions. Accordingly, causal analysis doesnot have much purchase for English School scholars.

She also observes the self-reflective bias of early English School scholar-ship. The classical scholars looked for evidence of an international society inthe self-understandings of the participants in international life. In terms ofmethod, this will incline them to a participant observer stance. Participantobservation requires than the analyst position himself close to the subjectsof the analysis, to understand their action in their own terms, but not soclose as to be unable to reflect on the subject’s meanings and normativeorientations.

In his essay that links methodology with method, Richard Little hasdefended a particular concept of methodological pluralism, one that resistseventual resolution. He relates different methods to different levels of analy-sis and to different forms of social structure. He argues that the classical the-orists in the English School tradition identified the reality of internationalrelations with a diversity of action arenas and with different forms of socialaction, as well as with different codes of behavior, and that these insightsare embedded in English School theory. In consequence, he argues, method-ological pluralism is a necessary consequence, and a necessary requisite, ofthe English School approach.

From English School theory, he draws three forms of structure, associatedwith international system, society, and world society, respectively. Thesemay be considered as alternatives or as concurrent potential settings whichare embedded in one another. But the main point he wishes to make, andit is critical from the viewpoint of method, is that each of these settings hasdifferent methods appropriate to its analysis—cost-benefit analysis in thecontext of a system; institutional analysis, and discourse analysis in the con-text of a society; and, among other approaches, normative argument in thecontext of world society.

In addition, there was the classical English School’s historical orientation,which eventually alerted its members to the different forms that interna-tional society had taken during its evolution. From an historical perspective,viewing a variety of international systems, the appropriate method wouldbe a comparative method, which compares different state systems over time


Cornelia Navari 5

to identify their distinctive features. Little argues, in line with many othercomparativists, that comparative method involves more than ‘thick descrip-tion’. It also allows one to identify the different elements that motivateaction.

Edward Keene moves more directly to the method he considers appropri-ate for such different action arenas. He argues that ‘international society’ andpossibly ‘system’ and ‘world society’ are forms of ideal type in the Weberiansense. For Weber, ideal types are central explanatory devices for the study ofsocieties, which try to unpack the motives for action. They do this throughthe identification of a social construction that is shaped by a value orienta-tion, as in the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Keene argues thatthe English School is ‘tantalising on the edge’ of constructing a series of idealtypes with the same intent—identifying motives for action. (One might notehere the suggestive work of Alexander Wendt who identifies three differentvalue orientations in three different ideal-type state systems; see also the edi-tor who has done the same in considering the three major historical phasesin the evolution of the Westphalian system.)14

The limits of methodological pluralism

A plurality of methods does not imply a plurality of ontologies, much lessepistemologies. So far as the English School is concerned, not everythinggoes. Central to the English School is the concept of international society.Little suggests that the concern with international society (as opposed tosystem or world society) was more or less accidental and that both ‘sys-tem’ and ‘world society’ have equal status with ‘international society’ inthe English School repertoire. But his proposition is arguable. It was the ideaof an international society that alerted the original English School schol-ars to the distinctions among the three types. Bull, for example, establishedthe distinctions between a society and a system in attempting to define aninternational society. Brunello Vigezzi has also argued, convincingly, thatthe idea of an international society remained the focus of the classicaltheorists through the course of the British Committee meetings.15 More-over, the concept of international society encapsulates the central insightof the English School that international relations constitute a set of socialrelationships.

On the status of this central concept, we may agree with Edward Keenethat it is, among other things, an ideal type, and that it is used, in the man-ner of all ideal types, to ‘measure’ some actually existing reality. That realityis constituted by, among other things, rules of conduct, or ‘norms’ in somemodern usages. These rules do not ‘cause’ things to occur, at least not in anydirect manner. They do not cause things to occur, because in logical terms,they do not exist before being demonstrated in action. They cannot be con-strued as causes because, in a causal relationship, causes must come before



effects, whereas rules of conduct can only be demonstrated in their effects.In the language of cause and effect, they are effects; they are not causes. Theyare downstream outcomes; they are not upstream inputs.

This, at once, distinguishes the English School from the ‘normativeconcerns’ of contemporary American scholarship. The first wave of contem-porary scholarly work in the United States on international norms positsparticular norms or ideas as independent variables and international coop-erative arrangements (regimes, treaties, etc.) as dependent variables. Much ofthis early work argues that the behavior and policies of states are shaped bynorms. ‘Shaping’ is a loose way of referring to a causal relationship. Severaldifferent of ways of shaping were identified: solving coordination problems;shaping political discourses; altering incentive structures within which statesact; and more generally through the abilities of ideas and norms to influencestate behavior at the international level.16 In the English School, such normsare not treated as ‘causing’, in a formal sense, anything.

From the late 1990s, a second form of norm literature began to emerge.This ‘second wave’ pays attention to norms’ abilities to ‘affect state behav-ior via domestic political processes’.17 Here, norms continue to be treated asindependent variables, but via a different process. In this literature, interna-tional norms ‘invade’ the domestic sphere and influence the public, varioussocial elites, and domestic discourses.18 Second-wave scholarship seeksempirical evidence of the domestic ‘salience’ of particular transnationalnorms.19 In this research, international cooperation results from a two-stepprocess: norms influence domestic actors, which affects states, which in turn,produces international cooperation. Second-wave literature also postulatesthat continuous international cooperation within international organiza-tions might strengthen certain norms and ideas. For example, Peter Haashas argued that the most significant impact of the series of United NationsConferences on environment and development has been the constructionand institutionalization of global norms, ideas, and discourses.20

So far as the English School is concerned, the Haas-type endeavor mayhave merit, since, in respect of Haas’ work, there are, first, conferences andthen global discourses. In other words, there is a logical progression that sat-isfies the minimal requirements of causality. But it would treat the first phaseof the project with the greatest circumspection. Norm-laden domestic con-stituencies might very well be influencing public policy. But to posit a causalrelationship between international norms and a domestic constituencyrequires first establishing not only that such norms exist, but that they existprior to their voicing by some domestic constituency. Unfortunately, muchof the second-wave literature tends to offer as proof for the existence of aninternational norm, its voicing by some domestic constituency.

If English School scholarship tends to shun causal relationships in theconsideration of norms, what is it for? It is important to recall somethingof the development of scholarly traditions in British international relations.


Cornelia Navari 7

Charles Manning, the doyenne of the English School, who first establishedinternational relations as a discipline at the London School of Economicsand who put the concept of international society on the intellectual map,was professor at the London School of Economics from 1930. His career coin-cided with the great period in the development of British anthropology.Radcliffe-Brown, to become professor at Oxford in 1937, had developedthe notion of functionalism applied to tribal customs and mores, and themethod was being widely discussed and applied, as well as being strenuouslydefended by its inventor. At the same time, Malinowski, professor of anthro-pology at the London School of Economics since 1927, was in the processof developing the new technique of participant observation. Anthropologywas becoming the mapping of the self-conceptions of social formations aswell as the anatomy of social ‘structure’—interdependent social institutions.Manning, following this anthropological model, saw as his task the initialmapping of the structure, the norms and the mores of an international soci-ety as evinced not only in the comings and goings of statespersons and othersignificant international actors but also in the increasing development ofinternational laws and institutions.21

The second generation of international society scholars was the groupjoined together in the British Committee, whose story has been ably toldby, respectively, Tim Dunne and Brunello Vigezzi.22 Its agenda was derivedfrom the experience of the total war through which Europe and Britainhad just passed and the Cold War upon which it had entered. The individ-ual research programs differed but were related by a concern with refiningthe concept of an international society and giving it an historical locus.Butterfield, for example, was concerned to theorize the balance of poweras the ground norm of a society of states and to demonstrate that, quanorm, it had had an historical expression—that it had actually existed asa norm during particular historical periods. His concern with the ‘newdiplomacy’ was the evolution of a new set of norms, together with theirimplications for traditional diplomacy and power politics. Wight was con-cerned to pin down the distinctively ‘Western’ (actually Christian) originsof not merely the norms of international society, but of the expectationthat there should be norms at all. He was, accordingly, extremely gloomyabout the prospects for shared social institutions in an increasing fragmentedinternational order presided over by increasingly secular states. Bull wasconcerned to identify what remained of an international society, given theharsh ideological rivalry of the Cold War. What they were doing, in the firstinstance, was discerning norms in environments in which norms were beingdisputed.

A third generation was formed by those participating in the series ofseminars on international political theory convened by Michael Donelanat the London School of Economics during the 1970s and 1980s. Here,the concern was to sustain, and develop, a tradition of theorizing against



the largely positivist agenda that was then dominating international rela-tions scholarship. The first undertaking was a series of reflections on theWestphalian state, as opposed to the residual entity produced by the preva-lent sociological approaches of the time, with their focus on classes, interestgroups and social processes, and the realist machtstaat that was their majorrival. The Reason of States was an exercise in exploring the symbolic andphilosophical aspects of the state, as well as eliciting some of the empir-ical manifestations of that state. The second undertaking, The Communityof States, was an empirical study of the contemporary state system in itscommunal aspects and was aimed at discerning the common understand-ings underpinning the international society of the 1980s, by which time theCold War has ceased to structure international discourses. Its third under-taking, The Condition of States, was concerned to inquire how the conceptof a society of states could be defended against the empirical fact of a widepost-colonial, and Cold War, variation in state forms.23

A set of specifically normative concerns became evident in the last vol-ume, in the concluding essays of Frost, Brewin, and Donelan, on practicalreasoning in respect of international relations, on the duties of liberal states,and on the obligations of states in respect of starvation, respectively. Christo-pher Brewin’s essay on the duties of liberal states anticipated John Rawl’sargument in The Law of Peoples.24 But a normative turn had already beenaccomplished by John Vincent in 1986 in his work on human rights inthe international order, where he not only accounted for, but defended anemerging norm of internationally protected human rights. Nicholas Wheelerhas carried this aspect of the English School forward in his work on theemerging norm of intervention to defend human rights.25

These cognitive concerns point in the direction of certain methods andexclude others. Historical methodologies which focus on deep forces andwhich exclude the self-understandings of the actors in the historical dramaare not part of English school approaches. Equally, positivist methodologieswhich aim at identifying trans-historical explanatory factors, such as envi-ronmental risk, population growth or economic downturns in the causesof war, are of little concern, since such factors cannot throw light on theself-understanding of political actors at particular historical periods. Equallyunwelcome are social process theories which ignore the state, or reduce it toa by-product of some more relevant social or economic agency, since the factof stateness is generally held to have an independent effect on outcomes inEnglish School thought.

On the state, English School theorists are ‘state-centric’ in the loose mean-ing of the term, since they believe that state form has implications for action,and they share that loose definition with Realists. But there are critical dif-ferences, with important methodological implications. The English Schoolconsiders the state in terms of a constitutional form whose laws, customs,and practices condition social action. It is not the ‘only actor’ and indeed


Cornelia Navari 9

not ‘an actor’ properly speaking at all: the English School recognizes manyactors. It merely insists that the fact of stateness qualifies their actions, just asthe fact of an empire would or a tribe would. Realists, by contrast, developedfrom a Machiavellian tradition which sees the state as the power-gathereramong diverse social forces, and a power-gatherer that has a form of intelli-gence, for analytical purposes. In method, the English School primarily treatsthe state as a setting or structure, whereas traditional Realists tend to treat itas an actor.

Power holds an important part in English School explanations, but notas an independent variable. Herbert Butterfield established a critical, and bynow, well-recognized distinction between the balance of power as a con-scious device used by statesman—a device buttressed by a well-establishedset of theoretical precepts—and the balance of power as an objective featureof political reality.26 The first is a theory concerning proper action, to guideor not to guide policy according to the understanding of the statespersonsat the time. (Presently, liberal thought disdains directing policy according topower balances.) The second is a calculus that seeks to expose the configura-tions of an objective reality. In respect of the latter, English School theoristsspend little time engaging in power calculus’s or theorizing the objectivequalities of power, since it is the perception of power that they deem to haveexplanatory efficacy, and perceptions are revealed by quizzing the actor, notthe environment.27

On the positive side, actor-centred methods, methods which place theemphasis on actors in more or less rationally understood situations, con-tinue to be relevant, since the English School continues to focus on theprecepts for action (and the precepts require a conscious understandingamong the actors). Among the different conceptions of rationality, ‘situatedrationality’ would be the generally favored form. Between homo sociolog-icus and homo economicus, English School scholarship puts the emphasison homo sociologicus. But the employment of un-situated rationality—cost-benefit analysis as well as game theory—is not entirely inappropri-ate. Hedley Bull’s work on arms control draws on, and indeed developed,game theory as applied to the nuclear arms race, not least because thenuclear arms race had some historically unprecedented features (that is, itwas ‘un-situated’). At the same time, Bull related the arms race to an ideal-type conception of war (that defined by Clausewitz), and re-grounded itin historical developments.28 Where the situation is historically unprece-dented, or appears unprecedented, game theoretical approaches will beuseful, not least because they tend to pull the analytical problematic backunto a more familiar historical terrain and allow the analyst to iden-tify ‘rules of the game’.29 Political theory, on the other hand, and thedevelopment of political thought—important elements in the developmentof new norms and practices—are most likely to be approached in theQuentin Skinner fashion, which looks to the development of theory in



particular political contexts and views theory in the context of debate andproblem-solving.

If their focus on rules of conduct militates toward intentional explana-tion, it is also the case that their historical understanding initially militatedagainst generalizations. The first generation of English School scholars wereconcerned to theorize what they understood as a unique set of interna-tional relationships. They held the European state system, then evolvinginto a global system, to be a unique type of international order. Uniquenesscalls forth idiopathic explanations, since it is not possible to generalize fromsingle cases. But Richard Little highlights the important subsequent workof Adam Watson, who was responsible for introducing the idea that inter-national order was a general type of which there were several species. The‘severalness’ allows for the sorts of comparisons from which generalizationscan be drawn.

Since English School theories focus mainly on social man, the social con-text becomes important in understanding social action. Navari points outthat the classical English School theorists were not deaf to the surroundingconditions that gave rise to the inclination to act according to agreed rules.And she agrees with Richard Little that ‘society’ and ‘system’ may be under-stood as different environments of action and, moreover, that they wereunderstood as such, certainly by Hedley Bull and also by Martin Wight, who,if they did not fully theorize settings for action, understood that action wasconditioned by its surroundings. This concern inevitably led them to causalspeculations, albeit of a rather ‘soft’ variety.

Theorizing causes demands theorizing context, as well as the relationshipof action to context. These may be theorized via ideal types in the Keenefashion. Or context may be apprehended, as the classical theorists first sup-posed, via an historical comparative method, currently recommended byRichard Little.

Methods and issue areas

In an important work which influenced Barry Buzan’s From International toWorld Society, Kalevi Holsti theorized the relationship between institutionsand international order.30 There, he distinguished between foundationalinstitutions and process institutions, and he plotted the interaction betweenfoundation and process to provide an initial explanation of change. In Chap-ter 6, he defends a causal approach to the understanding of internationalorder and relates causal efficacy to the emergence of and differentiationamong international institutions. He argues that order is impossible with-out institutions. He also maintains that a causally adequate account of theemergence of the contemporary international order is possible.

‘History’ is classically considered an important element in the EnglishSchool approach, but there is remarkably little agreement on what is meant


Cornelia Navari 11

by history and historical approaches. Will Bain elucidates three differenthistorical approaches, each of which would qualify as ‘English School’. Thereis Bull’s historical theatre, which treats history as a set of more or less self-contained lessons from which precepts may be drawn; there are Butterfield’s‘mediations’, which are part of the historical process itself and critical inunderstanding the formation of intentions; finally, there is Oakeshott’s viewof history, which Oakeshott argues is informed by contemporary under-standings. For Oakeshott, history is a story told by historians to elucidatepresent concerns; it is not ‘fictional’, nor is it arbitrary, but it has little to dowith what actually happened in history.

Among contemporary English School scholars, Richard Little argues for acomparative historical method, one that would allow the analyst to isolatethe factors relevant in shaping particular historical state systems at differentperiods. He argues that comparison allows for different elements that char-acterize different state systems to be identified and their role in constitutingparticular international systems to be hypothesized. He looks precisely forthose ‘contingent generalisation’ so wished for by Keohane. Will Bain drawson Michael Oakeshott to argue the contrary. According to Bain, the majoruse of ‘history’ is to allow for the identification, and comprehension of prac-tice, and that this is not history in the historian’s sense of an explanatorynarrative. Rather, he agrees with Oakeshott that history writing arises frompresent concerns, which orient the historian to his subject matter: the his-torian interrogates the past to throw light on present concerns. (The editorinclines to the Butterfield approach, and has identified the ‘mediation’ of the1914–1918 progressives on the relation between social change and war as acrucial factor in the new attentiveness to international order and institutionswhich marked the post-war ‘new liberal’ movement.)31

The English School keeps discovering international law, to which itgenerally takes a positivist approach, albeit from somewhat different episte-mological and indeed ontological positions. Terry Nardin has distinguishedbetween common procedures and common goals, drawing on Oakeshott’sdistinction between a ‘practical’ association and an ‘enterprise’ association.32

In Chapter 8, Peter Wilson outlines the English School approach to inter-national law in terms of a continuum between those who support a focuson ‘hard’ law traditionally conceived and those who include more informalpractices in their conceptions of law. Wilson suggests the appropriateness ofclassical legal positivism in identifying the most substantive or the ‘hardest’international norms. But he also suggests that a ‘legal aspirational’ approachis equally consistent with English School goals. (Legal aspirationalism iden-tifies quasi-norms that are struggling to take on a fully legal form; theapproach allows the analyst to chart a progressive development in legalnorms.) Barbara Roberson has identified legal reception, the entry into a legalorder of laws and legal concepts from external sources, as a critical process.Legal reception has several aspects: influences that come from outside into



a normative or legal order, how that order receives and interprets the law,and how legal reform plays back into the international system. She arguesthat legal process has played a central role in the expansion of internationalsociety. The application of the approach is demonstrated by the case of theincorporation of Egypt into international society.

Exploring practice from an empirical standpoint

Among these writers, one should note the importance of empirical workas opposed to grand theorizing. If English School theorists wear their grandtheory lightly, it is not least because they spend their time in archives gettingtheir hands dirty. They become immersed in diplomatic archives, memoirs,and newspapers. They spend time in international institutions, listening towhat international civil servants say and observing what they are doing. Thenotion of a ‘practice’ serves, among other things, to point the researcher inthe direction of the practitioner. The sources for such an approach wouldinclude foreign office documentation, memoirs of the major political actorsof the time, interviews, and historical archives.

What they are looking for in this material is the self-conceptions of theactors who are participating in the processes that constitute internationallife. Barbara Allen Roberson’s account of legal reception draws on the self-conceptions of a set of Egyptian legal officers in the processes that led toEgypt’s legal reform, central to its reformulation as a modern state. RichardLittle locates the explanation of Britain’s decision not to exploit the Amer-ican Civil War in the conceptions of sovereignty held by the officers ofthe Old Foreign Office. Will Bain, in his work on trusteeship, has lookedto the practice of trusteeship, and trusteeship as understood by the actorsat the time, to understand the institution, as well as the wider systemof late colonial relationships of which it was a part.33 Recently, this com-mentator conducted a series of interviews among bureaucrats at the WorldTrade Organisation responsible for its development agenda on whether theyconceived of themselves as innovators, pushing agendas ahead, or ratheras executors, carrying out the wishes of other, political superiors.34 Thequestion was meant to reflect on the locus of responsibility in the organiza-tion. (The interviews revealed that the WTO’s development bureaucrats hadhighly developed notions of duty, that they were very procedure-driven, andthat they did not act outside of their legal remits, suggesting a dependenceon constitutional frameworks for legitimation.)

Within the self-conceptions of the actors, of particular relevance are dis-courses of self-justification. It is within these discourses that the analyst willisolate most easily the prevalent norms that constitute international society.Discourses of self-justification are also a major resource for detecting normchange.


Cornelia Navari 13

On the normative concerns of the English School, identified as defini-tional of that School by Chris Reus-Smit, it may be observed that explicitlynormative theory, or ‘practical reasoning’ as Ruess-Smit prefers, is in fact notplentiful. Aside from John Vincent’s pioneering work on the developmentof an international human rights regime, that of Wheeler noted above andthe final section of The Condition of States, there is little more than a clutchof significant articles. These would include the editor’s ‘Civic Republicanismand Self-Determination’;35 John William’s ‘Territorial borders, toleration andthe English School’ (Review of International Studies, 2002); and Chris Brownon Charles Beitz; Peter Lawler’s ‘The Good State, in praise of “classical”internationalism’, and Peter Stirk’s ‘John Herz, realism and the fragility ofinternational order’, all in the Review of International Studies for 2005. Thenotable exception is James Mayall’s World Politics: Progress and its Limits(Cambridge, Polity, 2000), which is a substantial argument on interventionand its limits and which may be regarded as equal in importance to JohnVincent’s treatment of human rights.

The method employed by both Vincent and Wheeler is a form of legalpositivism, akin to sociological positivism. Both detect emerging norms andassign value to those norms in the degree to which they begin to informstate practices and international legal regulations.

This method is sometimes referred to as the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. It isaccused of conflating ‘is’s’ with oughts and is generally disdained by con-temporary philosophers.

Less susceptible to such charges is James Mayall. Mayall grounds his nor-mative arguments concerning intervention in Hume’s skepticism and onHume’s form of critical history, which understands the complexion of apractice by discerning the inner relationships of its constitution. In Mayall’scase, it is the Westphalian order in its evolving shape that forms the founda-tion of his argument, and the inner relationships that constitute that order.His method of argumentation parallels that of Burke, who employed Hume’scritical history to create an understanding of, in Burke’s case, the British con-stitution. After analyzing that constitution, and considering the challengesto it, Burke asked his readers to consider (and reconsider) their own attitudesto the ‘connections’, or causal entailments, revealed therein.

Some continuing lacunae in English School approaches

Most writing on English School approaches will argue that English Schooltheorists require more self-reflection concerning what they are doing, andthe writers represented here are no exception. Kal Holsti has pointed to thehistorical lacuna in Bull (who, he argues, has in fact no very well-developedaccount of ‘international society’ and has under-theorized his concept ofinstitutions). Keene refers to its methodological approaches as ‘notoriouslydifficult to grasp’ and requests greater precision in the use of such terms



as ‘ideal types’. Reus-Smit calls for greater sociological awareness amongEnglish School theorists. The editor has her own preferences, which revolvearound ideal types as structures, the empirical evidence for what would con-stitute an international society and a clearer consideration of what wouldstand for practice.

Notions of structure are scarcely lacking in the English School intellec-tual corpus, with its distinction between system, society, and community,but their causal properties and their relationship to action were only looselytheorized in the classical writing. Bull found it necessary to accept KennethWaltz’s theory of international politics as the most complete account ofthe consequences for action of the purely systemic aspects of anarchicalstate relations. (Given his tripartite distinction, Bull found no difficultyin doing so; he also made clear, however, that Waltz had not theorizedall possible forms of international relations.) Holsti argues that Bull’s ownconception of international society was not sufficiently spelled out toidentify its parameters or its consequences for action. He has placed theemphasis on institutions ‘necessary for the existence of order’, arguingthat order is impossible without institutionalized relationships. Barry Buzanhas argued in another place that global society, the third possible form ofinternational order suggested by Bull, deserves much more in the way ofexplication.36

Useful as these suggestions are, they do not specify how action is to berelated to structure. For example, Max Weber, by establishing that a certainvalue predisposition within capitalism was an integral part of the ‘structure’of capitalism, succeeded in identifying certain motives for action withincapitalism that were neither arbitrary nor subjective. Equally, democratictransition theory has identified, and in a similar way, a motive for actionin liberal democracies which is at the same time part of the structure ofliberal democracy (the inclination to trust democracies and to mistrust non-democracies). Keene argues that the English school is close to establishing aset of ideal types within which motives for action may be identified, but weare not quite there yet.

Some central English School concepts require not so much theorizing asmore precision in the use of terms. One of these is the difference betweena system and a society. This is a well-rehearsed issue, with Alan Jamesand Barry Buzan tending to blur the distinction and Little and Dunnedefending it.37 The question here is their respective empirical referents,rather ill-defined as Martha Finnemore has observed (noted above). Inthe classic formulation, an international society exists when ‘a group ofstates, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form asociety in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a com-mon set of rules in their relations with one another’.38 Pace Finnemore,this characterization requires the following: (1) the demonstration of aself-conscious understanding, on the part of diplomats and state leaders,


Cornelia Navari 15

of a social relationship existing between them; (2) a set of reciprocallyunderstood rules of conduct; and (3) less articulated but rather assumedby English School writers, a minimally shared understanding among polit-ical elites in different countries of the role of the state in respect ofcitizens and subjects. (Wight drew attention to this latter requirement inhis essay on international legitimacy and conceptualized the Cold Warsystem as in fact two different systems on the basis of different concep-tions of state-society relations.39) Its empirical manifestation would be aset of constitutative rules—the basic rules which define political agency aswell as the reciprocal responsibilities among agents. These would concernthe existence, coming into being and dissolution of the state, the def-inition of a state’s responsibilities, and the rules on intervention, mostobviously.

Bull, famously, distinguished that condition from a system on the onehand and a community on the other. In Bull’s taxonomy, a system willdisplay regularities and predictability, such that A will be followed by B.According to Bull, the Cold War displayed such regularities and can properlybe termed a ‘system’. A community, by contrast, is when a group followssome common ends; that is, it shares the same goals and works for themtogether. Whether an international community ceases thereby to be an inter-national society is not an irrelevant question, and Bull initiated a livelydiscussion on it (a slightly misguided discussion in the abstract, since thesewere ideal types—the more relevant question would be whether, for exam-ple, the European Union had ceased to be a form of international society.).Here, what is important to note is that Bull was trying to explain that a groupof individuated personas, like states, did not have to share the same ends inorder to have a social relationship. What such a relationship demanded wasthat they share some notion of proper procedures or ‘practice’ as defined byMichael Oakeshott. Robert Jackson, drawing on the work of Oakeshott andNardin, has clarified this point.40

A rather more interesting question is what would stand as an objectivereferent of an international society, as opposed to the often ambiguous self-understandings of the participants. When Finnemore complains that there isa lack of precision as to when a system becomes a society, she seems to wanta referent that stands irrespective of the views of the subjects, and one thatcould be, if not precisely measured, clearly identified. The choice of an objec-tive referent—and preferably one that is measurable—is the most sensitiveof social science undertakings, since it is not merely the quality of measur-ability that matters, but also selecting among the many characteristics ofany ‘social fact’, the one or several that most reflect its character. Indicatorsare not the thing itself, but rather indicate the thing, and connected withany social fact will be a wide choice of seemingly plausible indicators. Theproblem is to choose the one that indicates the social fact in question, andnot anything else.



Barry Buzan has taken up this challenge and has chosen institutional-ization, in particular a distinction between primary and secondary insti-tutions.41 Primary institutions represent fundamental underlying norms,and are more evolved than designed, such as sovereignty, diplomacy, andinternational law. Buzan relates these to John Searle’s notion of ‘social facts’,social institutions that are kept in place by collective agreement or accep-tance.42 Another term for this kind of social fact is a ‘practice’ and equateswith Jackson’s notion of practices. Secondary institutions, by contrast, arerelatively specific, concrete, and are usually designed (mainly intergovern-mental organizations and regimes). Buzan suggests that different historicalstate systems may be characterized, and identified, by the nature and com-plexity of their primary and secondary institutions. (He also suggests that afocus on institutions, of both types, permits the identification of not merelyhistorical but also regional state systems.)

But there are other potential indicators. Historically, the classic one in theEuropean state system was diplomatic representation. When consuls wereraised to the level of political officers, and political legations were estab-lished, this was the sign that the political entity in question had ‘joined’international society and was no longer a subject of it. When Britain raisedthe consular offices in Thailand and Japan to the level of political legationin the 1890s, this created a new set of social facts in Searle’s sense—Thailandand Japan had become equal members of international society and enjoyeddifferent statuses (and different material conditions) in consequence. (Insome cases, the status was ambiguous, as in the case of the Ottoman Porteduring the 18th century, where France had ambassadors and the otherEuropean powers retained consuls.) Today, a possible indicator of sharedpractices might be adherence to a human rights code, since in the contem-porary state system the measure of belonging would appear to be acceptanceof the basic civil society conventions (such as the rule of law or accountableadministration).

For a sociological indicator, one might consider Karl Deutsch’s nodesof communication. In Political Community and the North Atlantic Area,Deutsch identified two-way channels of communication between elites andthe mass and among non-elites as the critical factor in a genuine socialformation. He also identified the ratio between a country’s internal andexternal communications and transactions as an indicator of the degree ofits self-preoccupation or self-closure over time.

What is important to grasp from an English School perspective, however,is that these are indicators only and not the substance of a social condition.

The second question concerns the pluralist–solidarist quarrel; that is,whether the essential nature of a state system is pluralist, or whether itmay also move in a more solidarist direction, in which states share not onlypractices but also purposes. This question is not merely one of how to read‘the facts’—the degree to which states (or ‘peoples’ in the solidarist view)


Cornelia Navari 17

actually share common purposes. It is also whether the very nature of a statesystem implies pluralism and whether a state system loses its character as astate system when it begins to show solidarist tendencies. The latter is not atheoretical question alone: the institution of diplomacy, for example, wouldalter considerably if a global society were to be realized. What is importanthere is to separate empirical considerations from ontological ones.

At the empirical level, this question has come to be one of the mostcentral in some contemporary English School scholarship. If one looks at thework of Paul Williams in consideration of contemporary security regimes,or Nicolas Wheeler in the establishment of trust and the responsibility toprotect,43 in each the purpose is to discern the degree to which sharedpurposes are coming to dominate not only non-governmental organiza-tions but also state agendas and collective security arrangements, and toaccurately characterize those purposes. Robert Jackson has distinguishedsocietas from universitas, the latter involving shared religious or politicalvalues and he characterizes NATO as a form of universitas ‘based on agree-ment among its members concerning the fundamental goals and values ofdemocracy . . . open only to those who conform with its democratic norms’.(He is, it should be noted, not yet prepared to make such a statement con-cerning the European Union.) Such questions are quite distinct, however,from whether and in what circumstances we should value one over the other.Jackson makes his ontological stance clear when he states that the ‘domes-tication of religion and ideology arguably is the most significant historicalachievement associated with [international] society’.44

The third is the refinement of the concept of practice. The English Schoolconcept of practice is what Stephen Turner in The Social Theory of Practicescalls a ‘telic’ notion. A telic practice is ‘an activity seeking a goal “whichis conceived as a result of following certain general principles of proce-dure”’ (quoting from Kant’s ‘This May Be True in Theory but Does notApply to Practice’).45 Examples of telic practices are playing a game of chess,holding a seminar, baptizing a baby according to the way it is done in somedenomination, or going fly fishing. Such practices are carried out accord-ing to standards of excellence set forth in some tradition of interpretation.Maurice Keens-Soper has placed De Callieres’ De la Maniere de negocier avecles Souverains in a tradition of interpretation applied to diplomacy and onethat set standards.46 A practice in the English School sense is not a privateidea: a commitment to communal standards is required if one is to talkmeaningfully of a practice.

A telic notion of practice may be contrasted with a causal notion. In thecausal notion, a practice is a form of mentalist ‘object’ which impinges onother objects, in this case behavior. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, is inter-ested in practices as hidden convictions or habits shared by a group; he hastheorized something called a ‘habitus’ that informs social action.47 Whetherconceived cognitively, as a kind of presupposition, or causally, as a kind of



mental trace, a practice in the causal sense disposes thought or action in acertain way. In this form, practices are not directly accessible, their existencemust be inferred, and the means of accessing them are fraught with diffi-culties. A person engaging in a telic practice is guided by its standards ratherthan being caused to perform in some manner, and telic practices are directlyaccessible to empirical investigation.

Notes and references

1. Roger D. Spegele, ‘Traditional Political Realism and the Writing of History’, inAlex J. Bellamy ed., International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2005), p. 97.

2. In his review of Wight’s The Three Traditions, American Political Science Review, 86(1992), p. 1113.

3. ‘Exporting the English School?’, Review of International Studies, 27 (2001), p. 510.4. R. Jones, ‘The English School: A Case for Closure’ Review of International Studies 7

(1981), pp. 1–13.5. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 17.6. Firmly established by the Vienna Circle in the context of the debate on logical

positivism; see A. Janik and S. Toulmin, Wittgenstein’s Vienna (New York: Simonand Schuster, 1973).

7. In the British milieu, see especially Michael Nicholson, Formal Theories inInternational Relations (Cambridge: University Press, 1989).

8. ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, World Politics, xviii(1986), pp. 366–7 and 371–2.

9. A position he shared with Stanley Hoffmann; compare Hoffmann’s ‘The LongRoad to Theory’, World Politics, xi (1959), with Bull’s ‘Case for a ClassicalApproach’; both reject purely deductive reasoning.

10. See Holsti, pp. below.11. For example, respectively, and among a voluminous literature, C. Geertz, The

Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); J. Elster, Explaining Tech-nological Change (Cambridge: University Press, 1981); and not least, S. Smith andM. Hollis, Explaining and Understanding International Relations (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1990).

12. Chapter 1, but see also The Global Covenant (Oxford: University Press, 2000),pp. 5–8.

13. Navari believes that their normative concerns are sociological concerns, in theDurkheimian sense that a society is characterized by, though not caused by, itsnorms; see Chapter 2.

14. ‘States and State Systems: democratic, Westphalian, or both?’, Review of Interna-tional Studies, 33 (2007), pp. 577–95.

15. In The British Committee and the Theory of International Politics 1954–1985 (Milan:Edizione Unicopli Srl, 2005), pp. 33–4.

16. See, for example, Goldstein and R. Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Inter-national Relations and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell Press, 1993) and A. Cortelland T. Davis, ‘Understanding the Domestic Impact of International Norms’International Studies Review, 2 (2000), pp. 65–87.


Cornelia Navari 19

17. K. O’Neill, J. Balsiger, and S. VanDeveer, ‘Actors, Norms, and Impact: Recent Inter-national Cooperation Theory and the Agent Structure Debate’, Annual Review ofPolitical Science 7 (2004), pp. 149–75.

18. See, for example, M. Finnemore and K. Sikkink, ‘International Norm Dynamicsand Political Change’ International Organisation 52 (1998), pp. 887–917.

19. See, for example, T. Risse-Kappen Bringing Transnational Relations Back In: Non-StateActors, Domestic Structures and International Institutions (Cambridge: UniversityPress, 1995).

20. ‘UN Conferences and Constructive Governance of the Environment’ GlobalGovernance 8 (2002), pp. 73–91.

21. C.A.W. Manning, The Nature of International Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan,1975), esp. pp. 204–206.

22. T. Dunne, Inventing International Society (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998).23. The first two volumes were published by George Allen & Unwin, London, in 1978

and 1982, and the third volume by the Open University Press, Buckingham, in1991.

24. ‘On the Duties of Liberal States’, in The Condition of States (Buckingham: OpenUniversity Press, 1991), pp. 197–215.

25. R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1986); N. Wheeler Saving Strangers (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2000).

26. ‘The Balance of Power’, in Diplomatic Investigations ed. H. Butterfield and M. Wight(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 145–148.

27. See, for example, Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

28. The Control of the Arms Race (London: Wiedenfeld & Nicolson, 1961).29. The editor applied the same method to the ’withering away of the state’ thesis

in the last volume issued by the international political theory group; see ‘Onthe Withering Away of the State’, in C. B. Navari ed. The Condition of States(Buckingham: Open University Press, 1991), pp. 143–166.

30. K. J. Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

31. Internationalism and the State in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2000),pp. 6–8 and 238–248.

32. Law, Morality and the Relations of States (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1983).

33. Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and the Obligations of Power (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2003).

34. Interviews, World Trade Organisation, Geneva, June 4–6, 2004.35. In Moorhead Wright ed., Morality and International Relations: Concepts and Issues

(Aldershot: Avebury, 1996), pp. 73–86.36. B. Buzan, From International to World Society: English School Theory and the Social

Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).37. See Little in Theorising International Society, and A. James ’System or Society’ Review

of Interntional Studies 19 (1993), pp. 269–288.38. The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977), p. 13.39. ‘International Legitimacy’ in Systems of States, ed. Hedley Bull (Leicester: Leicester

University Press, 1977), pp. 153–173.40. The relevant influence is Terry Nardin’s Law, Morality and the Relations of States

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Nardin’s own understanding of



Oakeshott, from which he drew his approach to international law, may beassessed in his The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (Philadelphia: Penn State Press,2001); for Jackson’s own reading of the distinction, see The Global Covenant(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 116–122.

41. From International to World Society? English School Theory and the Social Structure ofGlobalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), esp. pp. 190–194.

42. Searle in The Construction of Social Reality (London: Free Press, 1995).43. P. Williams, ‘Critical Security Studies’, in A. Bellamy ed. International Society and

its Critics (Oxford: University Press, 2004), pp. 135–50; N. Wheeler, ‘A Victory forHumanity: The Responsibility to Protect after the 2005 World Summit’, Journal ofInternational Law and International Relations 2, 1 (2005).

44. The Global Covenant, pp. 345–349 and 368.45. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994, p. 8.46. ‘The Practice of a States-System’, in The Reason of States ed., M. Donelan (London:

George Allen & Unwin, 1978).47. Outline of a Theory of Practice trans R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1977).

August 25, 2008 9:39 MAC/THIS Page-21 9780230_547155_03_cha01

1International Relations as a CraftDisciplineRobert Jackson

Before undertaking an inquiry into the scholarly enterprise in the humansciences, it is necessary to understand the nature of the material that isthe subject of study. The English School is a form of classical humanism,whose subject is human conduct. What we are concerned with in the EnglishSchool approach is not technical facts but human relations, and humanrelations understood in terms of normative standards. Inquiry into worldpolitics is inseparable from a normative inquiry. I refer to this as the classicalapproach, following Hedley Bull.1

Normative inquiry into world politics

There are five things to notice or keep in mind when it comes to norma-tive inquiry into world politics. The first is the contradictory conceptions ofnorms that political scientists operate with: some conceptions cannot lead tonormative inquiry in the meaning of that term in classical political science.The second is the fundamental difference between a detached and disin-terested orientation to international scholarship and a politically activistorientation. The third is the dialogical modality of international ethics andpolitical ethics generally: it is a world of human communication, of ques-tion and answer, of dialogue and discourse. The fourth is that internationalethics is, by and large, created by statespeople: it is their normative equip-ment. The fifth is that theory is a creature of practice and not the other wayabout, as is often assumed.

The Study of Norms

Misunderstanding of normative inquiry is caused by the ambiguousmeaning of ‘norm’ in social science discourse. Karl Popper has distinguishedbetween nature and artifice, between ‘natural laws’—‘i.e., a law that is factualand can be tested to see whether it is verifiable or falsifiable’—and ‘norma-tive laws’—‘i.e., such rules as forbid or demand certain modes of conduct’.2

Positivist social scientists could be characterized as those scholars who seek

21


22 International Relations as a Craft Discipline

to discover patterns of social behavior, conceived as an objective external real-ity, and to explain that reality in terms of falsifiable empirical propositions.3

By contrast, classical humanists could be characterized as those scholars whoseek to discern, clarify, and elucidate human conduct: that is, human activitythat is assessed by reference to normative standards of some kind. There canbe no positivist explanations of human conduct. That would confuse thesebasic categories. There can only be history, philosophy, jurisprudence andrelated modes of understanding, interpreting, and elucidating its characterand modus operandi.

One prominent meaning of norm is sociological: a norm is conceived to bea pattern of behavior—a norm is how people usually behave. That is a posi-tivist concept of norm. In studying norms, positivists are studying behavior:norms are ‘recurring patterns of behavior’.4 That is not the meaning of normemployed here. Here the meaning is moral and legal: a norm is a standardof conduct by which to judge the rightness or wrongness, the goodness andbadness, of human activity. In studying norms in the classical way we arestudying conduct and not merely behavior. In studying behavior scientifi-cally one could study animal behavior as well as human behavior. But it isimpossible to study animal conduct in any recognized meaning of the term.Conduct (and misconduct) is exclusively a human activity that is judged bya moral or legal standard of some kind.

Political scientists, in conceptualizing norms, are sometimes prone toconfuse, to mix up, to try to bridge, or to stretch this basic distinction.For example, it has been said that ‘Norms may “guide” behavior, they may“inspire” behavior, they may “rationalize” or “justify” behavior, they mayexpress “mutual expectations” about behavior, or they may be ignored.’5 Tocombine these different notions is to invite and perhaps commit a categorymistake: for example, the mistake in this case of considering norms as bothcauses of behavior and standards of conduct. Some post-positivist analysis,particularly constructivism, is marked by such ambiguous conceptions ofnorms and normative study.

There is a distinction in positivist social science between empirical theoryand normative theory which indicates that norms could not be candidatesfor empirical inquiry. That clearly is a mistaken way of thinking. The humanworld is significantly composed of norms—that is, standards of conduct.Those standards have a historical existence. When historians study the con-duct required of Christian kings during the Middle Ages or that demandedof Roman governors during late antiquity or that expected of member statesof the United Nations today, they are engaged in an empirical analysis ofbasic political norms. It would be impossible to make much sense of LatinChristendom or the Roman Empire or present-day international societyor any other political world, past or present, without grasping the basicnorms that the people of the day use to justify or vindicate their politicalconduct.


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Standards of conduct are not empirical in the same (external) sensethat perceptible objects are empirical. For example, we can see the carapproaching on the other side of the road. But we cannot see the rules of theroad that are supposed to govern the driver of that car. We can see the solidyellow line down the middle of the road, but we cannot see what it means.The line in the middle of the road is a normative—that is procedural—ideaor concept. The rules of the road have an ‘existence’ in that human under-standing sense of the word. Norms exist socially and historically in the sensethat a certain set of people who are engaged in a specified activity are subjectto them at that place and time. They exist as ongoing standards of humanconduct. That empirical notion of a norm also applies to the particular setof people—that is, statespeople—who ‘drive’ the approximately 190 ships ofstate. They are subject to standards of conduct which are the equivalentof traffic regulations: that is international law, diplomatic practice, rules ofinternational organizations, and so on. That latter meaning of ‘empirical’ asreferring to norms that exist at a certain place and time in regard to certainactivities is the meaning employed in the classical approach.

A related misunderstanding is the belief that normative inquiry is pre-scriptive in character. I am here referring to a recommendatory or policyanalysis—rather than an interrogatory or expository analysis—which aimsat giving advice or proposing a course of action to be followed. It is theusual outlook of foreign policy analysis. University scholars are not in a goodposition to offer policy advice because they lack the immediate experienceand precise, up-to-date information which are crucial to successful policy-making. They are not where policy is made and they cannot therefore havea very good feel for the situation and its constraints and demands. LouisJ. Halle, who spent a number of years in the US State Department duringand after World War II and went on to become a distinguished professor atthe Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva started one of hisbooks with the following comment:

Anyone who has experienced international relations in a foreign office,on the one hand, and has taught in the universities, on the other, knowsthat they are not the same thing. The difference . . . is fundamental . . . Theimmediate presumption, especially in an empirical society like our own, isthat the difference ought not to exist. International relations as practicedin foreign offices is the real thing, and the real thing is what ought to betaught.6

Halle’s point is that the practical world of foreign policy and the theoreti-cal world of academic analysis are worlds apart and although ‘the one oughtnot to be without some relevance to the other’, to confuse them is fatal—for both parties.7 Theory and practice are categorically different modes ofunderstanding. (This point is expanded below.)



A further confusion is the equation of normative inquiry with moralizingin which the professor turns his or her lectern into a pulpit and gives asermon rather than a lecture. A normative analyst is here represented assomebody who is standing in judgment and rendering judgment. It may beworth repeating a few cogent remarks by Hedley Bull on this issue:

What is important in an academic inquiry into politics is not to excludevalue-laden premises, but to subject these premises to investigation andcriticism, to treat the raising of moral and political issues as part of theinquiry. I am no more capable than anyone else of being detached about asubject such as this. But I believe in the value of attempting to be detachedor disinterested, and it is clear to me that some approaches to the studyof world politics are more detached or disinterested than others.8

Detachment or Engagement ?

The traditional academic study of norms is expository: it involves obser-vation, discernment, interrogation, diagnosis, and explication. These areamong the most important stages of classical normative inquiry, the goalof which is theoretical understanding. The purpose of a classical normativeinquiry is exactly the same as Hedley Bull’s purpose in writing The AnarchicalSociety: ‘it is the purely intellectual one of inquiring into the subject andfollowing the argument wherever it might lead’.9

Hedley Bull maintains that scholars should be as disinterested as possi-ble in order to carry out scholarship that is properly academic and is not avehicle of their own personal values or political ideology. He clarifies thisimportant point in a defense of the classical approach:

The tradition of detached and disinterested study of politics is, I believe, avery delicate plant . . . Its survival depends on a form of commitment thatis not political, but intellectual and academic: a commitment to inquiryas a distinct human activity, with its own morality and its own hierarchyof priorities, that is necessarily brought into conflict with the prevailingpolitical values in any society.10

What Bull is referring to is the ethics of scholarship which is particularlyimportant in political science for the obvious reason that partisanship inour field of study is always an immediate temptation. He sees partisanshipas one of the big vices of academic life that scholars ought to do their bestto resist. The endeavor to do that is for Bull not only a difficult academicchallenge but also an essential responsibility of academic inquiry: it is at theheart of the ethics of scholarship.

Some scholars cannot accept Bull’s definition of academic responsibility.Currently, critical theorists are among the most prevalent of academicimprovers. They have set themselves the ambitious task of reforming


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international society theory to make it more relevant to improving humanconditions on the planet. They are often inclined to see the state as Rousseausaw it: an institution that keeps people in chains.11 They see the society ofstates in a similar way and they seek to employ their critical knowledge toreform international society.12 In exposing the injustice of the current statessystem they are hoping to pave the way, in thought, toward progressiveinternational change.

In the course of adopting that activist orientation, critical theorists criti-cize the classical approach for not facing up to the value implications of itsmode of inquiry: that is, for accepting the historical subject it is seeking tounderstand. In other words, it is seen to underwrite the international statusquo. Classical international society theorists are understood to be prejudicedin favor of past and present normative arrangements of world politics. Theyare criticized for not looking forward to the future in terms of the progres-sive change that might be possible and preferable to existing arrangements.In short, the classical approach hides a political conservatism.

But critical theorists of international society are not content with dis-cerning and elucidating international society as a distinctive historicalarrangement of political life. They are seeking to change it. Critical inter-national society theory is an offshoot of neo-Marxist critical theory. Criticaltheorists are critical of modern international society, as they see it, for toler-ating inequality on a global scale: allegedly by acquiescing to the politicalhegemony of the great powers, by ignoring the economic hegemony ofworld capitalism, and by upholding a doctrine of sovereignty and non-intervention which serves as a barrier to the rescue and emancipation ofhuman beings trapped in countries with despotic governments and destituteeconomies. Emancipation conjures up an image of liberating slaves and thusit implies that the populations of many countries are, in effect, enslaved bythe current state system. In defining the role of the academic in these termscritical international society theorists are declaring, in the manner of KarlMarx, that the responsibility of knowledge workers is not merely to under-stand world politics. Their primary responsibility is to provide knowledgeto change the world for the better. That rejection of agnosticism in favor ofactivism places them in a very different position from that of Martin Wightand Hedley Bull.

The question of the scholar’s orientation to his or her subject is a funda-mental question. How it is answered will shape the character of the resultantscholarship. Is it the business of academics to change the world for the betteras they define that value—keeping in mind that there could be differentand even contrary definitions which could pit one academic activist againstanother and might politicize academic life? Or is it the business of academicsto render the subject they are studying intelligible in proper academic terms?As indicated, it was the view of Martin Wight and Hedley Bull that aca-demics have the latter responsibility exclusively. For Wight that involved



the necessity of hearing not only the Grotian (rationalist) voice but also theMachiavellian (realist) voice and the Kantian (revolutionist) voice as well.As indicated previously, a voice is a distinctive and coherent expression ofcertain values and beliefs concerning world politics. To listen to only one ofthese voices is to close one’s mind to the other two and thus to engage in aone-dimensional and partial analysis.

The classical international society approach to normative inquiry is,accordingly, a pluralistic approach. By ‘pluralistic’ I mean that internationalhuman conduct, taken as a whole, discloses divergent and even contradic-tory ideas, values, and beliefs which must be recognized by our theories,and assimilated by them, if they are to be faithful to reality. If scholars ofinternational society seek to carry out an empirical inquiry, they must allowfor the tensions and contradictions of human experience in that sphereof human conduct: contingency as well as rationality, intentions and alsounintended consequences, ours as well as theirs, right and might, prudencealongside procedure, humanity as well as sovereignty, desire and duty, virtueand expediency, goals and rules, ideals and practices, and the rest.13

Values are of course the subject of normative inquiry. In the case ofinternational society there is a family of important values including peace,security, independence, order, justice, human rights, environmental protec-tion, and other values like them, which it is the business of scholars toinquire into and try to comprehend as fully as possible. Normative inquiryin the classical manner is the business of interrogating values and addressingvalue questions. That would include at some point, probably at the end ofour inquiries, the assessment and justification of certain values if we wereconvinced that they were, on balance, of greater importance. We might endour inquiry by arriving at a view of the subject that gives moral priority tojustice over order, or to human rights over sovereign rights, or more gener-ally to solidarism over pluralism, or we might end by reversing that priority.

But to arrive at such a considered evaluation after a lengthy inquiry isnot the same as starting our inquiries with a view to promoting our values.That latter orientation is not an academic orientation. It is a political ori-entation. If political scientists adopt such an orientation to their inquiriesfrom the beginning, they have, in effect, given up on academic study as adisinterested and detached study.14 The role of the political scientist, as Iunderstand it, is to try to give a plausible and coherent interpretation of thepolitical practitioner’s world: to construe that world in applicable academicterms in one’s teaching and writing. Once that is achieved one’s academicresponsibility in that regard is at an end.

The Dialogical Modality of International Ethics

Normative questions, and questioning, are central to everyday political lifeand they are just as central to international politics as they are to domes-tic politics. Being in positions of responsibility and wielding substantial and


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sometimes awesome power, national leaders and other people who engagein international relations cannot escape from such questions—even if theyfail or refuse to answer them. At almost every turn they are confronted bynormative controversies of one kind or another to which they must respondin one way or another. Responding means justifying their policies and theactions and consequences that flow from those policies. To ask for a justifi-cation is to call for a reasonable answer that invokes something more thannarrow self-interest: a normative and not merely an instrumental responseto the question. Thus a very important feature of world politics as indeed ofall politics is the dialogical interplay involved in justifying policy—in thiscase foreign policy. And the justifications of foreign policy are the centralmaterial for those engaged in normative inquiry into world politics.

Behind the justificatory language of foreign policy, and central to thetheoretical inquiry of the classical approach, are the great constitutive issuesof the society of states. Normative inquiry into world politics seeks tocome to grips theoretically with questions such as the following: Whichgroups of people qualify for recognition as sovereign states? Are the inter-national responsibilities of all states the same or do some states have specialresponsibilities. Are there any circumstances under which a sovereign state’sright of self-defense could be legitimately infringed? Is international societyresponsible for providing personal security or is that an exclusively domes-tic responsibility of sovereign states? Is international society responsible forthe governance of independent countries whose governments have for allintents and purposes ceased to exist? Must ‘ethnic cleansing’ always becondemned? Can the goal of spreading democracy around the world—inthe perhaps reasonable hope of securing greater peace in the future—justify military intervention and occupation of a country in the present?Can we reasonably expect national leaders to put their own soldiers indanger to protect human rights in foreign countries? Is there any moralbasis for justifying the use of force to change international boundaries orpartition states? In short, these are some of the most difficult but alsothe most urgent questions that could be asked about contemporary worldpolitics.

These questions are not purely philosophical questions. They do notaddress transcendental issues. This is an important point; there are philoso-phers such as John Rawls who would try to give eternal and general answersto such questions. But they are not amenable to that kind of treatment. Suchquestions are historically situated. They arise in the evolving historical con-text of the modern sovereign state. Most of them nowadays are questionsabout the morality of the society of states and the ethics of statecraft thathave arisen in recent decades and particularly since the end of the Cold War.We cannot even attempt to answer these questions with academic convic-tion unless we are informed about the historical context, and the historicalcontext leads us to a different sort of treatment from that involved in purely



philosophical inquiry. It leads us to contextualize our inquiry and to stayclose to the reasoning of the participants, not to impose abstract standardsupon them.

An Ethics of Practitioners

Even though international ethics is as wide-ranging as the subject of worldpolitics itself, at its core it concerns the moral choices of a very select cat-egory of people. It is the distinctive ethics of the men and women whowield the power of states: it is a construct of statespeople. It is the normativeequipment required for carrying out their responsibilities. The answers tointernational normative questions, such as those listed above, are providedin the first instance and most significantly by the practitioners involved. Animportant task in the academic study of international ethics is to interrogatethose answers with the aim of spelling out, clarifying, and scrutinizing theframework of justification disclosed by them.

State sovereignty has long been and still is a towering feature on the land-scape of world politics. The partitioning of the world into sovereign states,whatever we may think of it, affects profoundly the shape and substance ofthe practical ethics of world politics. The sovereign state defines not only thecitizenship of people—that is, their basic rights and obligations—but veryoften also their political identity and allegiance, perception of friend and foe,conception of security, source of welfare, and much else besides. There is nolonger a territorial sphere beyond international society that is occupied byparallel civilizations.15 The world is still divided among different civilizationsbut no civilization today is geographically outside the state system in theway that the Islamic world or the civilization of China in times past were out-side the Christian world where the state system was originally located. Todayeverybody around the world is inside a particular sovereign state—that is, isa citizen or subject—and is thus also inside the society of states. That globalpolitical fact has profound normative implications and consequences.

Statespeople, like everybody else, operate in a flow of human activitythat is particular to them. Nobody knows that experience in any intimacyexcept themselves and their immediate advisers and confidants. The streamof human activity that they are involved in is one of the most importantcurrents of history; perhaps it is the most important. The main current ofmodern international history is the record of their activities. Statespeople arehistorical actors: their activities are a contribution to the making of interna-tional history in their own time of office. The main platforms from whichthey operate are the ruling offices of particular sovereign states: the stateson whose behalf they conduct foreign policy and engage in foreign rela-tions. There is a common humanity, of course, evident in the cosmopolitandiscourse of human rights and humanitarian assistance. There are countlessnon-governmental organizations of one kind or another which engage inactivities that cut across the boundaries of states. There is a vast international


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marketplace that encircles the planet. But the territory and population ofthe world is still partitioned into sovereign states which are the primaryright and duty-bearing units of world politics whose leaders are the princi-pal international actors who carry the heaviest responsibilities for managingworld affairs. They are the leading actors around which the political dramaunfolds: they constitute the dramatis personae of history.

International ethics is shaped fundamentally by the heavy weight of statepower, both military and economic, in the hands of statespeople: in no othersphere of human relations is organized power as consequential. Today thelargest concentrations of power on earth are in the control of a few states:the five permanent nuclear-armed members of the UN Security Council (P-5)and the eight leading economic powers of the developed countries (G-8).Very significant state power is of course distributed far more widely. Indeed,organized power, both destructive power and constructive power, is greaterthan it has ever been. Some national leaders have it within their power todestroy life on the planet as we know it. And some also have the power toimprove planetary living conditions and to protect the planetary environ-ment. At base, therefore, international ethics is an ethics of responsibilitybecause some very powerful players are involved who can do a lot of goodand also a lot of harm. Indeed, their actions taken together affect virtuallyeveryone on the planet, both for the better and for the worse.

This raises an important question: how can academics assess those actionsin correct normative terms? International ethics is not an applied ethics: it isnot thought up by moral philosophers or political theorists and then appliedto politicians or other political actors. International ethics does not originatein the offices of university professors. There is no relevant moral standpointoutside international politics, such as John Rawls’ ‘veil of ignorance’, fromwhich to impartially judge the conduct of international actors—not if weaim to capture the situational realities of moral choice in that demandingsphere of human relations.16 That would impose a standard of conduct onthe subject that was not its own. University professors cannot determinethe moral standards of politicians, at least, not outside the activity to whichthose morals apply.

Just like ethics in any other sphere of human activity, internationalethics develops within the activity itself—in this case the activity of worldpolitics—and is adapted to the characteristics and limits of human conductin that sphere. International ethics is not external to the human activities andpractices of world politics: it is not something brought in from outside. Inter-national ethics is internal to world politics: it is the moral standards workedout over time by the practitioners involved; it is the normative world withinwhich they are obliged to operate; it is embodied in the practice of state-craft. To understand the practical ethics of world politics the scholar mustbe willing to enter imaginatively and with discernment, although not uncrit-ically, into the situation of the people who make foreign policy and conduct



the relations of states, the most important of whom are national leaders.‘Scholars must assess the conduct of statespeople by the standards that aregenerally accepted by those same statespeople.’ Otherwise our normativeinquiries lose touch with political reality and become irrelevant.

Practice and Theory

The argument that international ethics is the handiwork of statespeoplebecomes clearer from a brief analysis of the distinction between theory andpractice. They are different kinds of knowledge and their relationship is notquite what it is often made out to be. It is a common assumption that theorycomes before practice: we contemplate and then we act. Academic politicaltheorists are particularly prone to make that assumption. Theorists certainlycan and do shape the world indirectly through their theories both when theyare right and when they are wrong: the theories of Machiavelli and Marxmolded the future to a significant extent. But theoretical knowledge usuallycannot be converted directly into practical know-how because some usuallyindefinable insight rooted in particular talents and derived from relevantexperience is also involved. Political science graduates are not guaranteedsolely by their academic credentials to become successful politicians. Thatclearly is absurd, for they would still have to acquire practical political know-how which can be derived only from experience in a political role, such asserving an apprenticeship in the office of a political party or political official.

By political theory I do not refer to scholastic debates among political the-orists and moral philosophers about a theorist and his or her theory.17 Asindicated previously, by political theory I mean theoretical understandingof the existential political world, either contemporary or historical. Thatis, political theory in the classical meaning. That latter kind of politicaltheory is parasitic on political practice: it is empirical in the classical mean-ing of seeking to give an account of the world of human experience. Weneed a historical event or episode—that is, a human activity, occurrence,or coincidence—before we can theorize it. Thucydides’ ‘realist’ internationaltheory depends, for its existence, on the Peloponnesian war fought betweenAthens and Sparta from 431 BC to 404 BC, which provoked him to writeit.18 Theory is the knowledge of the observer and is generally characteristicof academic subjects. Theorizing in the human sciences is discerning andinterpreting intellectually whatever part or aspect of the world of humanrelations the theorist happens to be curious about.

Practice is entirely different. It involves knowing how to do something—for example, how to play chess, how to speak Russian, how to conduct apolitical campaign, how to command an armored brigade, how to present alegal argument in a court of law, how to negotiate a peaceful settlement ofan international dispute, and an endless number of other practical activitiesthat human beings manage to engage in.19 Practical knowledge is possessedby those who are able to engage effectively in an activity. Political practice is


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an engagement: engaging a problem or situation which involves other peo-ple who are also engaging the same thing but not necessarily from the sameangle or with the same interests or concerns in mind. Engaging in a practiceis acting on something usually by trying either to preserve it or to changeit but in any event trying to come to grips with it. Practical knowledge ofhuman affairs ultimately is knowing how to put the human world into abetter alignment with our interests and concerns.

Theoretical knowledge, as academically solid as it may be, is not a sub-stitute for practical know-how. For example, we know that the Duke ofWellington led the Allied Powers to a decisive victory over the Grand Armyof Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815 and we have a prettygood idea that Wellington did this by making the most of his opportunitiesand the military means at his disposal before and during the battle. Maybehe also was lucky on that day. Yet, as much as we may discover and learnabout that remarkable military achievement from our historical researchesand reflections, we would not expect owing solely to our academic knowl-edge of the event that we could have pulled it off ourselves. That wouldcall for talents and experience which scholarly knowledge alone cannot sup-ply. It would not prevent us from recognizing the force and significance ofWellington’s achievement and communicating our understanding to others.But one cannot take a theory and use it to enter into the world of prac-tice. Theorists cannot communicate with practitioners in the language oftheory—at least not if they wish to be clearly understood; they can onlycommunicate with other theorists in that language.

Theory is not a key to practice. A philosopher put that point as fol-lows: ‘a soldier does not become a shrewd general merely by endorsingthe strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to applythem.’20 Practical competency derives from talent and training honed byexperience—which is why young officers who have just graduated at the topof their class at West Point or Sandhurst and possess the most up-to-datemilitary education do not start their careers as generals. Practical manualsare, as a rule, no substitute for talent and experience although they are, ofcourse, an excellent aid to them. Cookbooks undoubtedly have a practicaluse. However, even an excellent cookbook probably will not suffice for some-one to become a chef. The cookbook is at best an abridgment or summaryof practical knowledge and cannot begin to communicate everything that isrelevant to the activity of cooking.21 We cannot say or write down everythingwe know about an art or a craft that we have mastered. Much that we knowwill remain unarticulated. Most people will acquire the culinary art only bycarefully and repeatedly preparing different recipes, ideally under the super-vision of an experienced chef. Even then some people may still not be verygood cooks. Practice does not always make perfect. Talent is also required.

Machiavelli’s famous book The Prince offers what purport to be prac-tical maxims concerning how to achieve political power and hold on



to it.22 However, we could not become successful politicians by studyingMachiavelli’s political maxims because, as indicated, we would still have toknow how to apply them, and that know-how comes from gaining experi-ence and not from reading books. The main value of The Prince is as an essayin political theory—one of the most important of such essays ever written.Machiavelli is famous as a theorist of politics and war, not as a diplomat orsoldier. Practical knowledge is knowing how to get on effectively with what-ever human activity one is engaged in. It is practical in that it is the crucialelement that helps to get the job done. Otherwise it is impractical.

To sum up, practice and theory offer two different kinds of insight intohuman relations. The first kind of insight is the know-how of the participantwho can make things happen or prevent things from happening or can atleast influence, if not shape, the subsequent course of the human activity heor she is involved in: the player who can score winning goals; the politicianwho can conduct successful election campaigns; the soldier who can winbattles; the lawyer who can defend clients; the diplomat who can defusea situation and bring about an agreement. The second kind of insight isthe knowledge of the observer—whose role is to construe the course andoutcome of those same events by figuring out their point, discerning theirdeeper meaning, trying to grasp their significance, and generally by givingan academic account of the episode—in the classroom or in an article orbook—which at least partly satisfies our aspiration to understand the subjectin the most intellectually comprehensive way possible.

International relations as a craft discipline

The classical humanist approach calls upon the scholar to enter with imag-ination and insight into the roles and situations of statespeople not withthe aim of advising them but, rather, with the hope of understanding theirconduct. If we cannot talk to such people directly—which often is notan option—we can always fall back on the empirical method of histori-ans. We can interrogate the evidence that statespeople leave in their tracks:the record of their policies and actions and the statements by which theyattempt to justify them. The history of the public activities of statespeo-ple and other political practitioners leaves a trail of evidence behind—likethe tracks of a wild animal in the snow—which the international relationsscholar can follow in the hope of capturing intellectually his or her quarry.

What is a craft discipline? It is not a scientific discipline that calls forknowledge of the philosophy of science or requires mastery of the best cur-rently available techniques or methods of research. A craft is not a science ora technique. It is more like an art. Mastering a craft involves deep familiaritywith the material that one is working with: its characteristics, limitations,and possibilities. A craftsman or craftswoman knows from experience whatcan be achieved by carefully working on the material with the proper tools


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and in the correct way. Craftsmanship is judged by its works. Crafts are thecreation of craftsmen and craftswomen who work according to the samestandards of excellence. Crafts involve proper ways of doing things based onpast experience. Crafts consist in the established practices of the craftspeo-ple. There are certain dispositions and skills—that is, certain virtues—that areconducive to certain crafts and are associated with them. A virtue is disclosedin performance: virtuosity is revealed in an excellent performance.

Virtues are centrally involved in the craft of political science even thoughthey do not capture much attention from political scientists, as compared tomethodology. Perhaps that is because research methods and techniques canbe packaged and taught through textbooks and classroom exercises whichare necessary for education on a massive scale such as we have today. Butthe virtues of classical political science cannot be taught that way. They canonly be imparted in a teacher–student relationship that is akin to that of amaster and an apprentice of a medieval craft.

Some political scientists are outstanding scholars and we make thatjudgment by reference to the excellence of their scholarship. An outstandingscholar is somebody who has a deeper and broader understanding of themost important and difficult subjects of his or her discipline. Only a veryfew political scientists achieve that high level of academic knowledge. Thatis not merely a question of good methodology. It is far more a ques-tion of academic virtue. All political scientists can be fairly judged by theacademic virtues involved in the study of human affairs including, amongothers, mastery of existing knowledge, insight into the subject, creativeimagination, discernment, detachment, judgment, even-handedness, andskepticism. When scholars of human relations write academic letters of ref-erence for their students or colleagues, these are the standards by which theyassess their scholarship. A craft discipline is mastered by degree and markedby degrees. Each subsequent degree recognizes a deeper and more compre-hensive knowledge of the same subject. That is a medieval notion and it isstill the way we think about mastering academic disciplines in the humansciences.

The craft discipline of classical international society scholarship involvesthe following main stages of research. First, it calls for attention to thosetheorists who have something to say which is not only sound or wise butalso perceptive and precise concerning the subject at hand—or rather thehuman activities related to that subject which they are noticing, scruti-nizing, reflecting on, and writing about. We should begin by reading theclassical works that provide the foundation of learning upon which we can,hopefully, build. Classical commentators, past and present, who offer someof the most profound commentaries would certainly include Thucydides onpolitical necessity, Augustine on the just war, Machiavelli on power poli-tics, Grotius on natural law and international law, Hobbes on the state andthe state of nature, Burke on prudence and civility, Kant on the human



community and the rule of law, J.S. Mill and Michael Walzer on freedom andnonintervention, Max Weber on the ethics of responsibility, Arnold Wolferson statecraft and moral choice, Herbert Butterfield on the tragic element ofinternational conflict, Hans Morgenthau on political wisdom, and StanleyHoffmann on duties beyond borders. This is only a personal selection froma long list of outstanding commentators on international relations, past andpresent.

Second, as emphasized above, the classical approach involves payingattention to what statespeople and other important international playersare doing, and saying, which includes scrutiny of their pronouncements andthose of others with whom they are dealing. That requires a sharp and skep-tical watchfulness for the justifications employed by international actors:those justifications, which abound in world politics, are the specific empiri-cal subject that we are theorizing. These are usually recorded and reported,and that is what we interrogate when we engage in such an inquiry.

If we are studying contemporary international issues, we might be in aposition to engage practitioners in conversation directly. Our aim would notbe to report practical thinking on current affairs or to comment instrumen-tally on it: that is, the activity of journalists and experts. Our aim is to beinformed about practical thinking in order to make our reflections moreto the point than they might otherwise be. I once had a conversation inVienna with an ambassador of the Organization for Security and Coopera-tion in Europe. She was concerned to discuss the violent secessionist conflictin Chechnya. She wanted to emphasize not only the OSCE’s humanitarianefforts to curb the violence by inserting peace keepers into the conflict butalso the importance of having Russia’s consent, which was more conceivableand obtainable by that country’s OSCE membership. From a classical inter-national society perspective, the OSCE’s involvement with Chechnya couldbe read as a small chapter in an effort to integrate a post–Soviet Russia intoa human rights—protecting international society. Here was an instance of arecurrent theme of order and justice in world affairs and of the difficulties ofpromoting justice at the risk of instability and disorder.

Third, those justifications must be interrogated in the context of thesituation in which they are made. By this I mean that the discourse ofstatespeople and other important international players should be scrutinizedwith a view not only to their explicit content and referents, but also totheir discernible intentions and what they assume or take for granted aboutthe conduct of international relations. Discerning this latter, often implicit,ideational context of international justifications is the most importanttheoretical understanding to be derived from the interrogative process. Thatis because it discloses the real, or lived, normative world of the peopleinvolved and is thus anchored in human experience and human history.An international relations scholar working in the classical tradition wouldseek to become conversant with the evidence of international justifications


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surrounding a particular controversy to know what is going on and thus toacquire some sense of the practitioner’s situation and what he or she hasin mind and is prepared to disclose publicly. Public disclosure is importantbecause it usually gives an indication of how a leader wishes to be seen inorder to secure public approval for his or her policy.

Fourth, that interrogation should be carried out with the major norma-tive preoccupations of classical scholarship in mind. The classical scholarshould be able to report not only what is going on or what happened. He orshe should also be able to interpret those goings-on in light of our inheritedbody of classical knowledge of the subject. What do the UN Security Councilresolutions and the US Congressional debates on the Gulf War disclose aboutwar as a normative idea? What do the justifications and condemnations ofthe UN and US operations in Somalia tell us about intervention as a norma-tive idea? How do these episodes inform our normative theories of war andintervention? Unfortunately, many international relations scholars who areconversant with the goings-on of world politics, who even justifiably pridethemselves on being well informed about current political events, often donot take that theoretical step. They do not connect their own otherwiseexcellent research to the larger classical tradition within which they mightvery well be working. They break off their scholarly hunt at the most criticalmoment and leave unanswered the most fundamental questions which aretheoretical.

Of course, any theoretical conclusions are always bound to be provisionalfor they are connected, ultimately, with the historical events and episodesthat provoked them in the first place. History rarely stands still and so wemust be open to revising or changing our theories. But I take encouragementfrom the fact that some provisional statements about events that are verylocalized in space and time have a way of becoming long-standing theoremsof international studies. Thucydides’ fascinating dialogue on necessity andchoice in the Peloponnesian war, by our standards a minor conflict foughtin a tiny corner of Europe more than two millennia ago, is the classiccase in point.23 These theorems are always our main points of reference intheorizing new international episodes or problems. They are our academicinheritance. By taking them up as a theoretical point of departure our ownwork becomes part of the classical literature of international relations. Whenwe take up the classical approach we are seeking to make a contribution tothat literature.

Fifth, our theoretical writings should avoid academic jargon beyond theabsolute minimum that is necessary for communicating with other scholars.Our academic inquiries should take up the living language of the subject: weought to be at home with the practical discourse of international relations.That is because international relations—like all human activity—consistsfundamentally of language which is a principal vehicle for its expression.In studying international human conduct we are in a basic sense studying



the practical language by which foreign policy, military affairs, diplomacy,international commerce, and so on are not only expressed but are alsocarried on.

That language contains many clues about our subject because, as indi-cated, it is fundamentally relational: that is, dialogical. Its vocabulary hasbeen fashioned to facilitate communication, interaction, and exchangebetween statespeople and other important international players. It facili-tates question and answer, address and rejoinder, offer and counter-offer,acceptance and refusal, agreement and disagreement, accusation and denial,condemnation and justification, and many other dialectical pairs. Interna-tional relations, as indeed all human relations, is interactive and transactive:the expressions ‘international’ or ‘transnational’ are intended to captureexactly that characteristic. So when we theorize international relations weshould always be alert to the ongoing dialogue of the political actors whoare contemplating actions, initiating actions, or responding to actions whichaffect each other—and may also be of interest or concern to other peoplewho are not directly involved but are also affected or might be affected. Thatdialogical activity is at the heart of our subject. By employing the literarydevice of the dialogue classical Greek theorists, such as Thucydides, in someways get closer than modern theorists to capturing accurately the characterand modus operandi of international human relations.

If we resort to a more theoretical terminology, as we must in order toconnect our writings with the classical tradition, our terms should be a trans-lation of ordinary language that expresses a more general idea but does notlose any of the original meaning. That is how the theoretical vocabularyof the classical approach is fashioned: it is derivative of and based on ordi-nary language. Thus, the origin or derivation of classical terms of art such as‘international order’, ‘international society’, ‘Westphalia’, ‘rationalism’, andso on can always be traced to the practical discourse of international rela-tions. Hedley Bull’s notion of international order is not far removed fromthe ordinary language of diplomacy. Martin Wight’s notion of ‘rationalism’is traceable to the language of international law. Even in terminology, thetheorist is always hostage to the practitioner.

Our theoretical language should therefore avoid stipulative definitionsthat have no reference to ordinary language. A stipulated definition is onethat is made up by the researcher. Such definitions are arbitrary from thepoint of view of their subject. They are rejections of the language of expe-rience and practice. They cut us off from the people and activities we aretrying to learn more about. They have the unfortunate effect of alienatingthe world of political science from the world of politics. Such definitions area currency of positivist and post-positivist political science and they havecontributed significantly to the scholasticism of those approaches.

This discussion can be summed up as follows: first, the classical approachto the study of international relations is first of all acquaintance with the


Robert Jackson 37

literature on the subject to which we ourselves are seeking to make acontribution. Secondly, it is familiarity with the actors’ understandings oftheir world. In becoming conversant with the sayings and doings of states-people the classical scholar thereby becomes vicariously conversant withthe world of practice. Those sayings and doings are of course registeredin almost endless speeches, policy statements, parliamentary debates, res-olutions, declarations, announcements, press conferences, interviews, pressreleases, broadcasts, reports, and various other statements and commentariesthat the real world of international relations not only leaves in its wake, likea great ship ploughing a furrow through historical time, but also employs asits principal modus operandi. The point of interrogating such evidence is notmerely to be informed about what is going on—although that is undeniablyimportant. The point is larger: if we are seeking theoretical knowledge aboutinternational relations, we need to be informed because we want to theo-rize from a basis of fact rather than fiction. The theoretical alternative is adreamland.


1. H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, 2nd edn (London:Macmillan, 1995); and R. Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a Worldof States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

2. K. R. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 1: The Spell of Plato (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1971), p. 57. Michael Oakeshott refers to his politicaltheory as ‘civil theory’. See his On Human Conduct (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975),pp. 108–84. I have explored the idea of ‘civil science’ in ‘Civil Science: Compar-ative Jurisprudence and Third World Governance’, Governance, 1 (October 1988),pp. 380–414.

3. The positivist approach to international theory is elegantly defended by MichaelNicholson, ‘The Continued Significance of Positivism?’, in S. Smith, K. Booth, andM. Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, pp. 128–45.

4. See S.P. Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, World Politics,XVII (1965), pp. 386–430. Also see Janice E. Thompson, ‘Norms in InternationalRelations’, Group Tensions, 23 (1993), pp. 67–83.

5. F. Kratochwil and J. G. Ruggie, ‘International Organization: The State of the Arton the Art of the State’, International Organization 40 (1986), p. 767.

6. Louis J. Halle, The Society of Man (London: Chatto & Windus, 1965), p. 17.7. Halle, The Society of Man, p. 32.8. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. xviii.9. Ibid., p. xv.

10. H. Bull, ‘New Directions in the Theory of International Relations’, InternationalStudies 14 (1975), pp. 280–290.

11. J.-J. Rousseau, The Social Contract (tr. Maurice Cranston) (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1968), p. 49.

12. K. Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’, Review of International Studies 17 (October1991), pp. 313–26. Also see K. Booth (ed.), Statecraft and Security (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998).



13. For more, see R. Jackson, ‘Pluralism and international political theory’, Review ofInternational Studies, 18 (July 1992), pp. 271–281.

14. See the insightful discussion in J. A. Schumpeter, ‘The Sociology of the Intellec-tual’, in J. Sklar (ed.), Political Theory and Ideology (New York: Macmillan, 1966),pp. 114–122.

15. This ancient image of a world divided by incommunicable civilizations has beenrevived by S. P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of WorldOrder (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Huntington grossly underestimates theinternational society basis of world politics and the extent to which the politicalworld today is globalized on that basis. Huntington’s argument is criticized in TheGlobal Covenant, chapter 14.

16. On the ‘veil of ignorance’ which is supposed to set up a fair procedure for deter-mining social justice, see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 136–142. This theory has been appliedto international relations by Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and InternationalRelations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

17. Unfortunately, many political theorists are content with taking up the argumentsof other political theorists in a seemingly endless round of self-obsessed scholasticagreement and disputation that is largely devoid of any curiosity about politi-cal experience and political history: that is, the world outside the academy. Therecurrent debates surrounding John Rawls’ theory of justice is a case in point.

18. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, tr. by Rex Warner (Harmondsworth:Penguin Books, 1972).

19. For a definitive analysis of this distinction, see G. Ryle, The Concept of Mind(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), Ch. 2.

20. Ibid., p. 32.21. M. Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays (new and expanded edition)

(Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), pp. 184–218.22. N. Machiavelli, The Prince (ed. by G. Bull) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,

1961).23. Thucydides, ‘The Melian Dialogue’, in History of the Peloponnesian War,

pp. 400–408.


2What the Classical English Schoolwas Trying to Explain, and Why itsMembers Were not Interested inCausal ExplanationCornelia Navari

The primary sources for English School methodology are DiplomaticInvestigations, the collection of essay edited by Herbert Butterfield and MartinWight, drawn from the meetings of the British Committee, and MartinWight’s Systems of States, collected, edited and with an extended introduc-tion by Hedley Bull. Bull’s own Anarchical Society draws upon and adds tothe methodological corpus represented in these two works, which howeverit does not surpass. In addition, there is a growing secondary literature, muchof which consists of exegeses of ‘the classic texts’, but which does not, withsome notable exceptions, develop methods.1 Investigations and Systems inconsequence remain not only fundamental but also something akin to holywrit: they are the sources for determining doctrinal correctness, as well asproviding methodological guidance.

Of the relations between them, if Diplomatic Investigations represents the‘broad church’ approach of the English School, then Systems of States mustsurely be its Canterbury. It is the fullest statement of the English Schoolapproach; and judging by Hedley Bull’s decision to publish Wight’s essays,and the degree to which he draws upon it, the most authoritative source ofits insights.

In his introduction to the essays, Bull characterizes Wight’s approachto the study of international relations in terms of a distinction between‘mechanical factors’ and ‘normative factors’.2 By mechanical factors, Bullintends explanation by factors external to the actors’ self-conceptions andthat exclude self-reflective views. He writes, ‘by contrast with those stud-ies of states-systems which view them as determined purely by mechanicalfactors such as the number of states in the system, their relative size, thepolitical configuration in which they stand, he [Wight] placed emphasis onthe norms and values that animate the system, and the institutions in whichthey are expressed’ (p. 17).3 For Wight, the character of a state-system is

39


40 The Classical English School and Causal Explanation

determined by its norms and values. Bull’s distinction was meant to establishclear blue water between the then dominant aspirations for a social sciencethat approximated the natural sciences, especially positivist methodologiesthat aimed to exclude the subjective views of the actors being studied, and a‘human science’ that took into account the value orientations of actors andthe norms embedded in institutions.

The approach involved a central focus on codes of conduct, codes thatspecify proper behaviour. According to Wight, the Hellenic system is a formof international society not only because ‘the Hellenes are related in bloodand language’ but more relevantly, because ‘they have shrines of the godsand sacrifices in common, and a similar way of life’ (p. 46). Commongods and ‘sacrifices in common’ point to codes of conduct. The distinc-tion between one state-system and another is determined by the behaviouralnorms of the respective systems. Wight writes, ‘Just war is the norm withinthe states-system, the Holy War the norm between states-systems’ (p. 34). Hecontrasts the eunoia, or good disposition, of the ancient Greeks with modernpublic opinion, arguing that the latter, in contrast to the former, ‘impliesnot simply benevolence, but adherence to some standard of action’ (p. 72).In the same vein, Herbert Butterfield views the balance of power in termsof a precept—‘an injunction to behave in one manner rather than another’.He differentiates ‘historical diplomacy’ from the new diplomacy in terms ofmaxims, a command or principle understood as a general rule of action.4 Hecharacterizes the new diplomacy in terms of a requirement that it compre-hend ‘the moral factor’, as well ‘the impression that it will make on publicopinion’ (p. 187). He differentiates the old from the new diplomacy in termsof distinct sets of precepts.

Bull’s own focus is with rules, but these are not the behavioural patternsunderstood in game theory. They are ‘rules of conduct’ understood by theplayers. In his study of order5, he defines the order of a society of states interms of agreed forms of conduct. Indeed, the cohesive factor in interna-tional relations, the factor that turns a system into a society, is a rule code,a ‘common set of rules’ (p. 13). Great powers are not simply distinguishedfrom other states by the quantity of power that they can mobilize. Ratherthey constitute a club, a ‘club with a rule of membership’ (p. 200).

The status of these codes is that they are in general self-reflective. Bull dis-tinguishes order as a pattern or regularity from order as purposive. The orderhe has in mind is not purposive in the mechanical or functional sense (inthe sense that a machine has a purpose), but purposive implying a consciousend or goal. The codes underpinning international society ‘promote certaingoals or values’ (p. 4). When Wight, in his essay ‘Western Values in Interna-tional Relations’,6 refers to a ‘coherent pattern of ideas’, he does not mean apattern discernable to the analyst. Rather he means a coherent set of ideasin the heads of the participants. On the common culture underpinning thestate-system of Hellas, he quotes Herodotus, a participant. In ‘explaining’


Cornelia Navari 41

the state-system of Hellas, he observes that the Greeks had a fundamen-tally hegemonial view of the state-system and ‘no developed idea’ (my ital.)of the balance of power (p. 66). Butterfield identifies an eighteenth-centurysystem in terms of its concept of the balance, which ‘was regarded ratheras a law’.7 The borders of any state-system are conceptual borders, histori-cally understood. Thus, the nineteenth-century state-system is a euro-centricsystem because it was understood in that manner at the time, whereas bythe mid-twentieth century it had come to be understood in more universalterms.

Consciousness implies not only self-consciousness but also consciousnessof others. According to Bull, powers are not just powers objectively, butalso because ‘they are recognized by others to have, and conceived by theirown leaders and peoples to have, certain special rights and duties’ (p. 202;my ital.). English School theorists are interested not only in subjective,but in intersubjective understandings. The distinction is between the indi-vidualism of the subjective actor and ‘shared meanings’ in Wendt’s terms;English School theorists understood their subject matter as social and reflex-ive; its practices embody, in Dunne’s words, ‘highly developed forms ofintersubjective identity’. Roy Jones is quite correct to detect a debt tophenomenology.8

The two classic statements of the English School approach to the con-stituent features of a state-system follow accordingly. According to Wight,a state-system is maintained ‘by the tacit understanding that every mem-ber of the states-system in claiming sovereignty and political independencefor himself acknowledges the same claim by every other member’ (p. 36).The conscious element is echoed in Bull in Anarchical Society: ‘A society ofstates exists when a group of states, conscious of certain common interestsand common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselvesto be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another,and share in the working of common institutions’ (p. 13; my ital.).

In terms of method, several principles follow. First, in identifying suchcodes, the sources are internal sources, what in the social sciences is referredto as the Participant Standpoint. In trying to determine whether a state–system can consist of only two members, Wight does not identify ‘trendcorrelations’ or seek common patterns among different state-systems (at leastnot initially). His first source is Theophylact of Simocatta as that historianreflects on the relations of Rome and Persia—‘the powerful monarchy of theRomans and the wisely governed Commonwealth of the Persians’. (‘By thesetwo great empires the barbarous and war-loving nations are kept in check,and mankind given better and safer government throughout’; Systems,p. 24.) He locates the starting point of the balance of power as ‘modern doc-trine and practice’ with Polybius, as that historian accounts for the stanceof Syracuse during the Punic Wars. For evidence of the nineteenth-centuryconception of the state-system as a European system, his sources are the



positivist international lawyer Hall and the great natural lawyer Lorimer,contemporaries, who both identified the international law of their time asEuropean in substance and concept, respectively. For the change in that con-ception, he quotes C. H. Alexandrowicz who, in 1967, emphasized a moreuniversal system (pp. 117–18). For the clearest guide to international norms,he recommends the study of public opinion; that is, the public’s subjectiveviews. (According to Wight, it is when IR concerns itself with public opinionthat it comes closest to the study of ‘the general culture of the society ofstates’, p. 71.)

The Participant Standpoint involves paying close attention to thelanguage of the actors and to the way they explain and justify their actions.Its historical sources are the statements and speeches of political leaders, andmemoirs of public life, particularly justificatory statements and speeches.Its contemporary sources include interviews designed to elicit the self-conceptions of what the actors are doing. Their conceptions of what theyare doing are, in turn, related to what Jackson has termed the ‘traditionalnormative concerns of classical humanism’; that is, questions concerningthe status of the state, the bases of international order, and the obligationsthe states owe one another. It is the classic method of Participant Observa-tion, where the observer immerses himself in the lived life of the subject, andthen relates his observations to some standard determined by the theoreticalobjectives of the project.

Those objectives are not to be understood as purely descriptive. The objec-tive is to gain what the American methodologists Glaser and Strauss refer toas ‘an active sampler of theoretically relevant data’, whether it concerns thelegitimacy criteria of a particular set of states, or their conceptions of order,rather than an ethnographer simply trying to get fuller data on a group.9

Ole Waever has suggested that this approach shares an orientation with‘semiotics’, a focus on ‘implicit cooperation (and thereby also dominance),the invisible non-questioned assumptions which impute “order” into poli-tics exactly because they are not questioned and therefore not thought of asinstitutions’. He cites Richard Ashley’s work as the exemplar.10 But the under-standings sought by English School theorists are not invisible and they donot lie beneath the surface of action—they are fully visible and containedwithin action itself. The closer model is Quentin Skinner’s concern withcontext and intent, with original meanings and concepts in context.

In terms of international relations methods, it implies ‘understanding’ asthat term is used by Hollis and Smith, who intend Verstehen or a kind ofempathic understanding of social phenomena. But in the Hollis and Smithconception of understanding, it is not clear whether the analyst must under-stand precisely as the participant understands or that the analyst and theparticipant (technically speaking, the analysand ) should share a commonunderstanding. When traditional English School theorists set out to explainthe norms of any state-system, they did not restrict themselves to categories


Cornelia Navari 43

identical to the categories of the participants. Rather, they used terms thatwould have been recognized by the participants. This is referred to as ‘subjec-tive adequacy’ in the methodological literature. It means that the analystmay (and indeed should) abstract from the categories employed by theanalysand, but not so far that the analysand would not recognize his ownactions, or the meanings behind them.11 Wight, commenting on relationsamong the city-states of the ancient Greek world, observes that there wascertainly a potential balance among the city-states, viewable by the analyst,but ‘the Greeks had no notion of it’. Accordingly, he refused to attribute tothe Greeks a policy of balancing power. On the other hand, it is not neces-sary that Polybius, who does have a concept of balancing, have precisely thesame understanding of the balance of power as a modern practitioner for thepractice to be assigned an explanatory role in Roman diplomacy.

The Participant Standpoint involves not only attention to words, but alsothe identification of practices in the sense recently highlighted by RobertJackson.12 Practice is more than words; it is theory influencing action, orpraxis in the Marxist sense. Bull speaks of ‘understandings which are notembodied in a treaty, and which may arise from reciprocal declarations ofpolicy, or simply from behaviour of the parties which is as if in conformitywith a rule, even though that rule is not agreed, not enunciated nor evenfully recognized [ital. in original]’ (p. 223). Praxis recommends attentionto the action behind the words insofar as there seems to be a rule guid-ing the action. Thus, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the UnitedStates ‘did not . . . break off diplomatic relations, withdraw recognition of oneanother’s sovereignty, repudiate the ideas of a common international law orcause the break-up of the United Nations into rival organizations’ (p. 43). Inother words, there appeared to be a rule of limitation in the conduct of theirconflict and some shared standard of proper behaviour. In distinguishingbetween the Western Powers and the Third World during their confronta-tions of the 1960s and 1970s, Bull similarly locates standards of behaviour.He notes that ‘whereas the Western powers, in the justifications they offerof their policies, show themselves to be primarily concerned with order, thestates of the Third World are primarily concerned with the achievement ofjustice, even at the price of disorder’ (p. 77).

Practice is not always identified in the same way in English Schoolwritings. Wight recommended evidencing practice in the history of ideasrather than diplomatic behaviour, since actual diplomatic practices coulddiverge and were ‘contingent’. He felt more comfortable with the notionof a diplomatic tradition, and he identified a Western tradition (offered asevidence of a distinctively Western practice in diplomacy), which he charac-terized as a Whig or ‘constitutional tradition’.13 He lists, among his sourcesfor the existence of such a tradition, Burke, Tocqueville, and Gladstone.Through thought, they informed a tradition of diplomatic understandingthat resonated in action. (Wight identified such a tradition by moving back



and forth between diplomatic consensus (as opposed to behaviour) and thepractices recommended in and theorized by his ‘Whig’ authorities, a goodexample of Dilthey’s ‘hermeneutic circle’, moving back and forth betweenindividual practices and social ‘texts’.14) Accordingly, for Wight, the test ofsuch a ‘tradition’ is consensus, constantly reappearing and reasserting itsauthority. But his notion of a diplomatic tradition is not divorced from theidea of praxis. Both imply behaviour that is theory informed.

A more serious divergence concerns the conception of the ‘participant’ orsubject. Ole Waever asks, ‘are we talking about beliefs that are in the deepestsense shared, or about conventions that are followed because this is deemedrational’.15 The distinction here is between homo sociologicus and homo eco-nomicus; between man as a cultural product and man as a rational agent.On this critical question, English School theorists held divergent views.Martin Wight conceived his subjects primarily in social and cultural terms—as homae sociologicae. They were imbued with beliefs and cultural practices.Hedley Bull, by contrast, tended to view his subjects as rational agents;they are primarily interest oriented. Sheila Grader is correct to observe someimportant ontological differences among members of the School.16

Whatever differences in the conception of human agency, however, thereis a shared rejection of the notion that an international society can be pro-duced by forces that exist outside of individual human agents, such as ‘thebalance of power’ or ‘globalisation’ understood as processes that happen irre-spective of human intention. In his role as historian, Butterfield emphasizedthe critical role played by ‘mediations’ in the historical process. These werethe understandings that one historical period had of the past, a central fac-tor in understanding motives for action. Bull, on the view that there is ‘anautomatic tendency for a balance of power to arise’, the view propoundedby Kenneth Waltz, insists in Anarchical Society that ‘[t]his is not the case’.He argues that ‘[s]tates are constantly in the position of having to choosebetween . . . maintaining or extending their international power position, anddevoting these resources and energies to other ends (p. 111; my ital.)’. Heattributed the Cold War balance to ‘an element of contrivance’, notablythe rational pursuit of a balance between the US, the USSR and China, andon ‘the agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union on thecommon objective of maintaining a balance between themselves, at least inthe limited sphere of strategic nuclear weapons (p. 114)’. Mutual deterrencewas not the same as a fortuitous balance. It was ‘an institution or quasi-institution’, and a conscious policy, not the happy (and automatic) outcomeof a balance (p. 117). (This idea led Bull into sharing many notions withthe emerging American deterrence theorists, especially in this regard, AlbertWohlstetter.17)

Third, evidencing the ‘fact’ of international society requires evidencinghuman engagement in, and human understanding of, such a society. As towhether the Chinese Central Confederacy’s regular assemblies, apparently


Cornelia Navari 45

well-established by the seventh and sixth centuries BC, amounted to apermanent conference, and an ‘inclusive international institution’ (as, forexample, the League or the UN), Wight is negative, and on the groundsof the intentions of the Confederacy, since ‘its aims seem to have beendefensive against other Chinese powers, and not inclusive’ (Systems, p. 32;from this we may also conclude that for Wight, inclusiveness is a necessaryfeature of an international society.) Bull, using Vatels’ understanding of abalance as ‘a state of affairs in which no one power is in a position whereit is predominant and can lay down the law to others’, notes in AnarchicalSociety that ‘it is not sufficient for [such a] balance to exist objectively butnot subjectively’ (pp. 101 and 103). In accounting for present stability, henotes that the ‘United States and the Soviet Union now each recognize a needto limit the power of the other’ and ‘a need not simply of theirs but of inter-national society at large’ (p. 110; my ital.). In discussing the applicability ofthe ‘radical Salvationist model’, he notes that ‘the prospects of movementtowards a more centralized global political structure, based upon a process ofconsensus, appear slight’ (p. 305; my ital.).

Bipolarity might produce ‘stability’, but not society. Wight took it forgranted that there was no ‘common culture’ between the West andCommunism and mostly described their confrontation as a conflict betweentwo states-systems. Bull would produce the famous distinction betweena ‘system’ and a ‘society’. A system might produce some regularity ofbehaviour, but it alone could not produce a society. He noted no ‘commonculture’ in the Cold War balance although there was some ‘common stockof ideas’ (p. 115). But he also insisted that mutual deterrence ‘is essentiallya state of belief (p. 123)’ and not merely a mechanical outcome. Butterfieldwould conclude in his famous essay on the balance of power that ‘an inter-national order is not a thing bestowed upon by nature, but is a matter ofrefined thought, careful contrivance and elaborate artifice’.18

International society is also, accordingly, a product of conscious intent. InEnglish School thought, a society is generated intentionally and consciously.Describing international society as ‘the habitual intercourse of independentcommunities’, and noting its manifestation in the diplomatic system and inthe conscious maintenance of the balance of power, Wight insists that ‘[a]llthese presuppose an international social consciousness’.19 A society (at least asociety of states) exists when its members consciously recognize their depen-dence on one another, and on the institutions and rules of internationalsociety, for their mutual well-being.

In her comments on the English School, Martha Finnemore complainsthat there in no clarity on the markers for when a system becomes a society,and little explanation of the processes.20 The first raises the very pertinentquestion as to whether there are any positive signs of the transformationfrom system to society. To be sure, there are. One sign would be the develop-ment of regimes, and in particular the cumulative effect of rule making; that



is, the tendency of rules to produce more rules. Another would be institu-tionalization. Barry Buzan has attempted to, in effect, ‘positivise’ the EnglishSchool through plotting the development of secondary institutions. But oneshould be cautious about such ‘signifiers’ from an English School perspec-tive. The ultimate test of such a society is evidence that the agents feel thatthey are members of such a society and in particular that they feel that theyare obligated by social rules.21

In recounting the history of the emergence of such a society, or the forcesthat changed it, they will accordingly tend to prefer intentional explanation;that is, explanation by reference to the intentions of specified agents. Inaccounting for the rise of Athens against Sparta, Wight sources that rise inthe ambitions of Pericles: the Athenian League is his brainchild, and theLeague is wrecked by the actions of Sparta. If the subsequent dualism is tobe understood as an unintended outcome, it is the unintended outcomeof intentional action. In accounting for the defeat of Athens in the sec-ond Peloponnesian war, the reasons are ‘that she failed in her grandioseattempt to conquer . . . Sicily and because Sparta called in . . . Persia’ (Systems,p. 61). Dating the origins of the modern or Westphalian system, he citesthe Congress of Mantua, 1457–60, on the grounds that it was the first ofthe medieval congresses ‘to be frustrated by the national egoism of the pow-ers’ (p. 111). In accounting for fractures across states-systems, Wight quotesBurke: ‘the warm parties in each state were more affectionately attachedto those of their own doctrinal interest in some other country, than totheir fellow-citizens, or to their natural governments’ (p. 36). On the demo-cratic tendencies of the contemporary states-system, he notes that bothinternational system and domestic government ‘have been made mattersof ideology by apostles of homogeneity within the states system’, citingMazzini and Wilson as exemplars of such apostles (p. 41). The outcome ineach instance is explained by reference to the intentions of specified actorsat specified times.

Bull spent a good deal of time in Anarchical Society assessing the prospectsfor the Cold War international system, prospects that he rested primarily onthe agency of the great powers. These included ‘maintaining and extendingthe consensus about common interests and values that provides the foun-dation of its common rules and institutions’ (p. 315), and, unlikely to beachieved, ‘a radical redistribution of resources and power in favour of . . . theThird World’. Observing that ‘the revolutionary model’ provides an ‘alter-native route’ to redistribution, Bull’s account of that model is one in whichrevolutions are made by revolutionaries, not by deep forces (pp. 312–314).In discussing Kothari’s Footsteps into the Future, a plan for reconstructingworld politics on regional lines, Bull praises Kothari for addressing his planto ‘a group of powers with certain concrete common interests and a capac-ity for action’, noting that ‘[m]ankind as such is not a political agent oractor, and it is inevitable that prescriptions about its future be addressed


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to particular groups that are politically competent’ (p. 311). Assessing thepossibility that increasing interdependence might ameliorate the Cold Warstruggle, he notes that mutual sensitivity ‘can be exploited by each actor forits own purposes’ (p. 280) and will fail to have the generating effects claimedfor it on those grounds.

In an agent-centred approach, the focus will naturally fall on‘practitioners’—those involved in international decision-making processes.This will include political leaders, to be sure, but also international lawyers,diplomats, foreign service officers, consultants from specialist institutes,representatives of non-governmental organizations, and even ‘the public’ inthe degree to which it may be deemed to participate in the processes of normand regime evolution. If by ‘second order activity’ Roy Jones means schol-arship remote from abstract philosophical speculation, he is quite correctin his characterization of English School ‘science’. It is practioner-oriented.Where he is not correct is in rendering it ‘utterly dependent on what politi-cians do for its material’.22 The dramatis personae of English School accountsare not limited to politicians, or even to official diplomats but to those whoaffect outcomes.

The focus on intentional explanation is accompanied by a studiedaversion to causal propositions. Bull denies that there is ‘any automatictendency for a balance of power to arise’ (p. 111). He also denies thatinterdependence, understood as an independent variable, ‘in itself gener-ates a sense of common interest, let alone of common values’ (p. 280). Heobserves that the existence of nuclear weapons ‘has not robbed war of itshistoric political function’; that is, caused war to become an irrational act(p. 194). (Bull maintained that despite the tendency of nuclear weapons toinduce constraints, or alternatively to negate the political calculation thathad hitherto informed war’s purposes, war would remain an instrumentof policy.) Wight, for his part, hesitates to generalize about any ‘external’conditions that may lead to the formation of a state-system. His featuresof a state-system: sovereignty, diplomacy, shared culture, and so on aredefinitional and taxonomical, not causal, and they are synthetic concepts,not separable ‘facts’.

At one point in Anarchical Society, Bull does seem to endow rules andinstitutions with causal ‘effects’. Early in the essay, he speaks of rules andinstitutions as being part of the ‘efficient causation of international order’(p. 74). Suganami takes this statement as central evidence that EnglishSchool theorists had a genuine interest in causality.23 But Suganami is notpaying sufficient attention to the care with which Bull expresses whathe means. First, Bull defines ‘causation’ in very general terms—as specify-ing the ‘necessary and sufficient conditions of its [an event’s] occurrence’.Such a definition includes intentional as well as causal explanation. Moreimportantly, it also includes syllogism, a logical statement in which thewhole is contained in the parts, by definition. In fact, Bull is calling on



syllogistic reasoning at this point, not causal inference. He is observingthat there would be no society without rules and institutions (since ‘soci-ety’ implies rules and institutions), and that the rules and institutions ofinternational society ‘explain’ (in modern terms, constitute) the compassand nature of that particular society. He is making a logical point, not anexplanatory one.

In his introduction to Thinkers of the 20 Years’ Crisis, Peter Wilson hassuggested that the generation of scholars that composed the English Schoolmay have taken the explanatory routes they did because they were ama-teurs and accordingly methodologically naıve, as noted in the Introduction.Clearly, one possible explanation for their eschewal of causal connectionscould be naivety concerning the requisites of an explanation in the scientificsense. Concern with methodological specificity in international relationsscholarship is largely a product of the positivist–anti positivist debates ofthe 1960s and 1970s.

But Wight clearly understood the difference between causal and otherforms of explanation. At one point he observes the tendency, which hebelieves history has confirmed, for a state-system to lead ‘fairly directly’ tothe establishment of a world empire’, and he asks, ‘What can be said aboutthe possible causal connections?’ He goes further to propose a causal expla-nation: ‘that the balance of power is inherently unstable, and that sooner orlater its tensions and conflicts will be resolved into a monopoly of power’24

This causal proposition drew upon Toynbee’s view of the direction taken bymost historical state-systems—a trend correlation. Not necessarily a correctone—it would be disputed by Kenneth Waltz, who postulates, on the con-trary, that one aspiring hegemon will be countered by an emerging coalitionto balance it. But it is certainly a causal postulate in that it isolates a rele-vant operator and is amenable to refutation. Wight was well aware of thedifference between causal propositions and the understanding of intention.As for Bull, his work on arms control is scarcely naıve. It builds on a seriesof rational choice postulates, in the formal manner that rational choice isgenerally understood.

If they ignored causality, it was not out of naivety. Rather it was becausecausal propositions could not deliver what they expected of a body ofknowledge concerned with the generation of an international society. InEnglish School thought, a society is generated intentionally and consciously.It is conscious engagement that creates a society. But causal propositions asunderstood in science are proposition about things that happen irrespective of inten-tions. Paraphrasing Bull, we might say that while a system may be causallyproduced, a society is intentionally produced.

To be sure, there is not a simple distinction between causes and intentions,not least because intentions may become genuine causes. An example is thepeace movement during the 1930s that contributed so much to appease-ment. (In one interpretation of the causes of appeasement, governments


Cornelia Navari 49

were pushed into appeasement policies in part because of the strengthof public opinion, a ‘normative’ factor and a product of intention. Thisoperated in conjunction with the independent and ‘mechanical’ factor ofelectoral politics.) There is also the distinction between ‘push’ propositionsand ‘pull’ propositions. In the social sciences, causal propositions come intwo forms. The first form pushes behaviour, as in, for example, the theoryof interdependence. Interdependence is commonly understood as pushingstates into cooperation, even if they would prefer not to cooperate. Butthere is also another form of causality in which the causal factor merelyinclines agents to cooperation (the ‘pull’ factor), and in which cooperationwill not happen unless conscious engagement is also present. An example of‘pull’ would be global warming conventions. Global warming, understood asa process occurring irrespective of intentions, may be required to lead peopleto adjust their energy usage. But adjusting energy usage also requires a con-scious engagement, in the sense of an understanding of, and a deliberationto avoid global warming, to actually produce a global warming agreement.In pull propositions, both intentions and causes are required to produce thedesired outcome. (We shall consider the relevance of ‘pull’ in English Schooltheories below.)

For the English School, however, consciousness is definitional of society,and consciousness of society is central to there being a society. The statesthat make up international society recognize one another and share somecommon values. It is their recognition of one another and their sharing ofcommon values that make it a society. Moreover, English School analysesare directed towards analysing the historical consciousness of specific histor-ical periods, as that consciousness relates to the international society of thetime. The historical consciousness of the particular period is presented as theexplanator (and indeed the sufficient explanator) that ‘explains’25 the shapeof the international society at any given time.

Since the nature of an historical consciousness is at the centre of theEnglish inquiry concerned with the existence, stability, or durability of inter-national society, causal explanations generally fall outside of their purview.Bull’s insights are the most relevant here. He denies that interdependencecan ‘in itself generate a sense of common interest, let alone of commonvalues’. Writing during the 1970s, he notes that, at the time of writing,the ‘element of society’ enjoyed ‘only a precarious foothold’, and that the‘consensus necessary to such a society’ was simply not present (my ital.). Thereasons he cites, moreover, are all rooted in historical consciousness. Theseinclude the ideological divisions set in train by the Bolshevik revolution, the‘post colonial situation’, and ‘the revolt of non-European peoples and statesagainst Western dominance’.26

The question is whether English School theorizing is completely anti-thetical to causal theorizing. And the answer is ‘No’, with importantqualifications.



In the first place, the classical theorists were sensitive to the conditionsunder which a human understanding conducive to the creation of inter-national society might arise, and their works are peppered with insightson such conditions. At one point in Systems, Wight comments on theconditions for the growth of international law as that relates to the num-ber of states in a state-system. He observes that ‘the society which is togive birth to law must contain a sufficient number of members for thequestions which arise among them to be viewed in a general light’. (‘Betweentwo or three individuals particular interests determine and general rulesdo not arise’; the question was intended as a reflection on bipolarity andwas meant as a warning to those who sought to use Rome and Persiaas ‘a historical precedent for peaceful co-existence between world-dividinggiants’; the giants of his time being the Soviet Union and the United States;pp. 24–25.) In accounting for the rise of a form of state-system in the NearEast during the Armana period, Wight cites the revolution in communica-tions that preceded it, a revolution due to the introduction of the horseand the invention of cuneiform. Most importantly, the ‘greater the cul-tural unity of a states-system, the greater its sense of distinctness from thesurrounding world is likely to be (p. 25).’ Bull, in Anarchical Society, datesstate-systems from the ‘time there is interaction between them sufficient tomake the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of theother’ (p. 10).

Some of these conditions are understandings that have become instan-tiated in institutions. Wight proposes that the most important differencebetween the Western state-system and that of its rivals is that it developed‘out of the theoretical institutional unity of the Respublica Christiana with itsdiarchic structure of Sacerdotium and Regnum’. He means by this that theideas of state and state-system grew together in the Western thought and are,to a degree, mutually constituted, as opposed to other state-systems wherethe state is conceived as having developed entirely independently, and out ofinternal forces only. Another example he proposes is the territoriality of themodern territorial state—also an idea that has become institutionalized. Inrecounting the origins of the modern state, Wight is concerned to pin downthat moment when thinking in territorial terms becomes prevalent, since thatindicates institutionalization.

Such institutionalized understandings will be condition creating and canbe said to constitute an environment that inclines actors in a certain direc-tion and, accordingly, to have genuine causal properties. In the Westernstate-system, for example, Wight observes that the ‘theoretical institutionalunity’ of state and state-system creates a environment sympathetic to com-munal ideas. It provides a grounding for the general receptivity of the ideaof a community of states. This would be a cause in the Weberian sense.27

Another example may be found in Bull’s discussion of rights espousal;according to Bull, the modern state institutionalizes an obstacle to the idea


Cornelia Navari 51

of internationally guaranteed human rights: ‘if it is chiefly through the viewsof states, and of states assembled in international organizations, that we haveperforce to seek to discover the world common good, this is a distortinglens’. For Bull, the balance of power is also condition creating, and in a veryfundamental way—it provides the basis for all the other institutions of inter-national society. He writes that ‘both general and local balances provide theconditions in which other institutions . . . have been able to operate.’28

One especially critical connection between ‘general propositions assertinga causal connection between one class of social events and another’ andthe order with which he was concerned was identified by Bull. This was thekind of scientific law ‘that afford[s] a basis for predicting future behaviour’.This sort of law will begin to appear ‘when the primary goals of social coex-istence are consistently upheld’.29 The resultant will be firm expectationsabout future behaviour. And these will feed back into support for the rulesin a form that produces predictability. In other words, for Bull, rules ofthe game, consistently observed, can become patterns of behaviour, andthese can have independent effects; that is, effects separate from the partic-ular attitudes or orientations immediately in the heads of the participants.(The model here would be the rules of mutual deterrence that, after awhile,became self-enforcing rules and provided the basis for a series of more orless secure predictions about super-power behaviour.) Rules of the game thatproduce patterns of behaviour change the explanatory field. They convertintentional explanation into causal explanation.

Institutionalized understandings that have causal properties can beunderstood as soft structures, in the way commonly identified in sociology;that is, as social products (or social facts) that ‘socialise’ or affect behaviour.They are causal because (and in the degree to which) they have becomesufficiently embedded in the cultural fabric that individual choices can dolittle to affect them. Timothy Dunne emphasizes ‘the danger of obscuringthe important distinction between the constraining nature of intersubjec-tive practices . . . and the enabling role of individual agents in institutingthose practices’.30 Practices that constrain are indistinguishable from causes;here, the distinction is between ideational (or ‘soft’) and material (or ‘hard’)causes.

But English School understandings also include ‘material’ conditions,‘mechanical factors’, and even ‘hard’ causes. Butterfield was well aware thatintentions could not explain everything and recommended attention to‘deep forces’ in his methodological essays. These included economic forces,the material aspects of communication systems, and even realist powerquantums. Bull himself observes that ‘if the subjective element of belief init is necessary for the existence of a balance of power, it is not sufficient’. Atone point in Anarchical Society, he refers to ‘a power . . . in a position to gainan easy victory over its neighbour, even though it is generally thought to bebalanced by it (p. 104)’. In the same passage, he observes that both will (that



is, intention) and capacity (that is, material capabilities) are required to main-tain a power balance. Secondly, there is ‘the possibility of finding conformityto scientific law in social conduct that is disorderly’ (p. 8). An example ofthis kind of scientific law, with which the English School had no quarrel,is the ‘security dilemma’, a decidedly mechanistic operator. Richard Littlehas gone so far as to suggest that ‘like the neorealists’, the ‘English School’accepts that states get pushed and shoved this way and that by the structureof the international system; and Little identifies structure with mechanisticand material forces.31

Little has also suggested a schema by which material and cultural fac-tors may be integrated in English School theorizing. Drawing on thenotions of international system, international society, and transnationalcommunity, he has suggested that ‘system’ is the mechanistic or causal levelof analysis; that transnational community is the cultural, or identity or self-understanding aspect of analysis; and that the international society of rulesand institutions is the explanandum or resultant. International society doesnot cause things to happen, not in the first instance at least. Rather, theprocess of push and pull between material and cultural factors causes inter-national society.32 (International society may also ‘cause’ things to happen,in that, once codified, its rules may serve as confining structures; evidencefor this, however, derives ultimately from the actors’ understandings of whatthey are doing. For this important point, see Little’s chapter.)

But the ‘classical’ method, the one employed by the classical EnglishSchool theorists to pin down causes, is comparative analysis. This appearsin two forms. On the one hand, there are different historical forms of state-system, identified by geographical extent, power configuration, and com-mon understandings. Thus, English School theorists distinguish betweenthe early modern system, the European systems of the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries, and the contemporary system, on the basis ofidentifiable features. These historical forms provide a taxonomy from whichthere may be extracted some causal propositions. For example, Wight, Bull,and Butterfield each at various times proposed that the ideological features ofthe late nineteenth- and twentieth-century international systems producedmore violence than the non-ideological nature of the eighteenth-centurysystem.33 This is a hypothetical postulate in which a certain factor, in thiscase an ideological factor, is causing something, notably more violence; thepostulate, moreover, is derived from historical comparison.

These historical state-systems should be distinguished from ideal typicstate-systems, another form of comparative analysis. Bull is the clearestexemplar here. He set up three ideal types of state-system: ‘the state of war’(which may rise to the level of a complex ‘system’), international society,characterized by consensus among states, and transnational solidarity, char-acterized by consensus among peoples across national boundaries. Historicalsystems may be compared directly. Thus, again, in Bull, the European system


Cornelia Navari 53

of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had a common culture ‘both inthe sense of a common intellectual tradition and stock of ideas and commonvalues’, while the Cold War system displayed only ‘some common stock ofideas’.34 But, equally, different historical systems may be characterized interms of how closely they approximate to one or other ideal type. The lattertype of treatment allows for the identification of factors that have to bepresent in order for international society to exist, generally. On the basisof ideal-type analysis, the classical theorists postulated that ideological fis-sures impede international society, generally. The first is a form of ‘weak’cause; that is, a cause connected to simply one event; the second is strongcause or cause proper—a cause that covers all events of the same type. Thesetwo forms of causes are sometimes referred to, respectively, as historical (oridiopathic) explanation and nomothetic (or cover rule) explanation.

Hidemi Suganami has criticized the classical English School theorists forambiguity concerning their thinking about ‘History’ and its relations tointernational relations. He asks, ‘how far, according to them is IR to be idio-pathic and how far is it to be nomothetic?’ (and how far, indeed, historicist?)only to respond that the place of history remains ‘uncertain . . . in writings ofthe English School’.35 Whether many schools of thought have sorted out thispuzzle is a moot point; Little observes that tug ‘between the desire to under-stand both the particular and the general is not . . . peculiar to the “classicalapproach” but “is an endemic feature of the social sciences”’.36 But thereare particular reasons why the classical English School theorists might havehad an especial difficulty with ‘weak’ causes and idiopathic explanationsas opposed to ‘strong’ causes and nomothetic explanations. We must recallthat for the English School the international system is an historical product.Moreover, it is the result of one critical and indeed momentous transforma-tion. This was the movement from the ancient to the ‘modern’; that is, thedevelopment of the modern state as a sovereign state within a system ofsovereign states. There was no precedent for this momentous event; accord-ingly, the explanation of this transformation must be necessarily idiopathic(since there is only one such transformation), if not indeed speculative.At the same time, there may be some historical parallels, sufficiently closein some features, to allow of some generalizations. Dunne observes a ‘sec-ond phase’ in the development of the British Committee when ‘the grandtheoretical question of the nature of international society mutated into acomparative history of earlier states-systems in the expectation of deepen-ing the Committee’s understanding of how states-systems are formed, andthe means by which they are sustained or transformed’.37

To sum up this part of the argument, despite their apparent disdain forcausal propositions, English School theorists were led into causal theorizing,and not merely accidentally or unintentionally but as a logical resultant oftheir historical vantage point. If the international system is an historicalsystem, then there must be historical conditions for its emergence and



maintenance. This insight led them into theorizing not only those condi-tions but also theorizing some of the causes of them, and even generalizingcauses where the historical evidence seemed to support general propositions.What they disdained was a-historical causal theorizing—identifying causesthat did not respect time and place.

One can, of course, quarrel with the particular ‘ideal types’ outlinedin English School writings. Mervyn Frost, sometimes associated with theEnglish School, in fact rejects its state-centredness. He maintains that a formof international society does exist, but on the basis of individuals as rightsgranters, not merely states who mutually recognize one another. This leadshim to identify the scope or ‘realness’ of international society on quite adifferent basis from the state-centred orientation of the English School. Italso leads him to quite different ‘causal conclusions’ as to how to changeor reform international society. (English School theories of change will gen-erally start with practitioners encountering tensions in normative practice;see Barbara Allen Roberson’s chapter. By contrast, Frost’s theory of changestarts with undifferentiated individuals—you and me—encountering moraldilemmas.38)

One can also quarrel with the very conception of international societyas an ideal type. When Max Weber theorized the ‘ideal type’, he intendeda social construction of reasonably unproblematic identity, such as capi-talism or democracy, and a social construction that had clear independenteffects. It is not clear that ‘international society’ has yet to achieve this samelevel of unproblematic identity. Moreover, the classical theorists did notstrain to establish beyond doubt that the norms and institutions of inter-national society have ‘independent’ effects. Morton Kaplan has complainedthat English School theorizing is inductive, not deductive; that it postulateseffects and then goes looking for them, instead of setting up hypothesesfor testing.39 This is the challenge that Stephen Krasner has thrown downin postulating sovereignty as ‘organised hypocracy’, a challenge to EnglishSchool theory in particular.40 He wants it demonstrated that rules and norms,such as sovereignty, have independent effects—that they can cause thingsto happen—and moreover the sort of independent effects associated withEnglish School claims; that is, effects arising from value orientations.

One question, by way of conclusion, that might be worth consider-ing is whether an English School theorist can take up Krasner’s challengeand still remain within the compass of English School theory. Can shestill be an English School theorist who determines in a ‘scientific’ fash-ion the consequences of such constructions as sovereignty and a norm ofnon-intervention? Or would she be bowing to the reign of positivism inproposing tests for the causal force of her particular social constructions?

The answers are yes, and no, respectively. An English School theoristwould certainly be interested in evidence that ‘international society’ has thekind of causal properties that are proposed in the theory. That is, she would


Cornelia Navari 55

be very interested in the sort of studies that demonstrate that sovereigntyhas the kind of force that leads states to be necessarily self-regarding, or ruleenforcing. She would also be interested in learning of the causal proper-ties of social phenomenon that incline states towards mutual recognitionand rules of conduct. But she would reject any theory that proposed thatsuch ‘mechanical factors’ could, of themselves, be sufficient to produce aninternational society. In other words, the causal element cannot be the soleexplanator. Her subject is international society, and her theory is that con-scious engagement is a central element in the production of such a society.The evidence she seeks is, finally, evidence of such a conscious engagement.This evidence may be in the form of expressive utterance or in the form ofpractices. In either case, the requirement for this sort of evidence keeps theEnglish School analyst not only outside the reign of positivism, but opposedto non-subjective approaches generally.


1. The major exceptions are the following: Timothy Dunne, ‘The Social Con-struction of International Society’, European Journal of International Relations 1(1995), pp. 367–89; Andrew Hurrell, ‘International Society and the Study ofRegimes’, in V. Rittberger ed. Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1993) pp. 49–72; Richard Little, ‘Neorealism and the EnglishSchool: A Methodological, Ontological and Theoretical Reassessment’, EuropeanJournal of International Relations 1 (1995), pp. 9–34; Hidemi Suganami, ‘Interna-tional Relations as an Intellectual Pursuit’, in A. Linklater and H. Suganami eds.,The English School of International Relations (Cambridge: University Press, 2006)pp. 104–48; Ole Waever, ‘International Society—Theoretical Promises Unful-filled?’, Cooperation and Conflict 27 (1992), pp. 97–128; and Tim Dunne’s response‘International Society—Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?’, Cooperation and Conflict30 (1995), pp. 125–54.

2. Martin Wight, Systems of States ed. H. Bull (Leicester: Leicester University Press,1977).

3. Page numbers in parenthesis signify reference to the previously mentioned work.4. H. Butterfield and M. Wight eds. Diplomatic Investigations (London: GeorgeAllen &

Unwin, 1966), pp. 147 and 183.5. H. Bull, The Anarchical Society (London: Macmillan, 1977).6. In Diplomatic Investigations, pp. 89–131.7. Ibid., p. 147, my italics.8. Tim Dunne, ‘International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?’, Cooperation

and Conflict 30 (1995), p. 146; Jones, ‘The English School of International Rela-tions: a case for closure’, Review of International Studies 7 (1981), p. 3; Jones iscritical of the School, partially on those grounds.

9. Glaser and Strauss are the gurus of interpretive methods in American sociol-ogy, where the quarrel is not so much with positivism as epistemology; ratheras methodology; their approach is called ‘grounded theory’ and sometimes ‘theChicago School’; see B. Glaser and A. Strauss, The Discovery of Grounded Theory(Chicago: Aldine, 1967).



10. ‘International society—Theoretical Promised Unfulfilled?’, Cooperation and Con-flict 27 (1992), p. 110.

11. ‘ . . . those who are subjects of the study must understand the concept’; DerekLayder, Sociological Practice: Linking Theory and Social Research (London: Sage,1998); Layder’s is a widely used account of participant observation and therequirements of subjective adequacy.

12. The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: University Press,2000), pp. 16–19; he calls them ‘procedural norms’.

13. Systems of States, p. 90.14. See ‘The Western Tradition’; in a hermeneutic circle, individual instances are

conceived as parts of a whole and each is treated as throwing light on the other.15. ‘International Society—Theoretical Promises Unfulfilled?’, pp. 97–128.16. ‘The English school of international relations: evidence and evaluation’ Review

of International Studies 14 (1988), pp. 29–44; she also claims methodologicaldivergence, but the chief methodological difference she observed was in fact anepistemological difference; between Bull’s philosophical realism and Manning’sidealism (pp. 32–33).

17. See Wohlstetter’s ‘The Delicate Balance of Terror’, Foreign Affairs 37, 2 (1959),which shares Bull’s notion that there is nothing automatic about deterrence;Bull hosted the Oxford Conference on the new thinking in nuclear strategy in1960, which united American and British civilian strategists on the conceptualrequisites of a stable deterrent.

18. Diplomatic Investigations, p. 147.19. Systems of States, pp. 96–9720. ‘Exporting the English School’, Review of International Studies 27 (2001),

pp. 509–13.21. Ole Waever makes the very important observation that much of the matter

of international politics does not so much take place within rules, as it is astruggle about the rules; ‘ International Society–Theoretical Promises Unfulfilled’,pp. 108–109, and he wonders if this is also ‘international society’ as understoodby English School theorists. The answer is no, except in the degree to which thestruggle is itself rule-bound.

22. ‘The English School: a case for closure’, p. 9.23. Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International

Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 129–30.24. Systems of States, p. 45.25. Hollis and Smith have, of course, contrasted explanation with understanding.

But intentional explanation (‘understanding’, in their terms) is a genuine formof explanation, so long as the intentions precede the outcome. The contrast iswith causal explanation and also, not discussed here, functional explanation.(For a definitive discussion of the differences between causal, intentional, andfunctional explanation, see J. Elster, Explaining Technological Change (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1983).

26. Anarchical Society, p. 280.27. In the same sense that the Protestant ethic is a necessary condition for some forms

of capitalism; see Edward Keene’s chapter.28. Anarchical Society, pp. 86 and 107.29. Anarchical Society, p. 7.30. ‘The Social Construction of International Society’, European Journal of International

Relations 1, 3 (1995), p. 373.


Cornelia Navari 57

31. ‘Neorealism and the English School: A Methodological, Ontological andTheoretical Reassessment’, European Journal of International Relations 1, 1(1995), p. 15.

32. ‘Neorealism and the English School’, pp. 14–18. He suggests, but does notdevelop, the idea that cultural factors may lead actors to interpret mechanisticforces in different ways.

33. See esp. Butterfield, ‘The New Diplomacy’, in Diplomatic Investigations; alsoCornelia Navari ‘States and state systems: democratic, Westphalian, or both?’, inReview of International Studies, 33 (2007) pp. 577–595. By violence they mean thescale, not the numbers of wars, where the eighteenth century excelled.

34. Anarchical Society, p. 115.35. ‘International Relations as an Intellectual Pursuit’, in Linklater and Suganami eds.,

The English School of International Relations, pp. 110–13.36. ‘Neorealism and the English School’, p. 15.37. ‘International Society—Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?’, p. 132.38. Ethics and International Relations: A Constitutive Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1996).39. ‘The New Great Debate: Traditionalism vs. Science in International Relations’

World Politics 19, 1 (1966), pp. 1–21, with which Butterfield had in part to agree;in the introduction to Diplomatic Investigations he notes that ‘the procedure hasbeen . . . empirical and inductive’, p. 12.

40. Krasner names the English School as one of his five basic models of interna-tional order, and it is the one most closely associated with his rule-maximizingmodel (the model he seeks to refute); Sovereignty: Organised Hypocrisy (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1999).


3Constructivism and the EnglishSchool1

Christian Reus-Smit

Constructivism and the English School are often said to bear strikingfamily resemblances, a view encouraged by their mutual concern for thesocial dimensions of international life. Realist critics have been quick totar both with the same brush, criticizing them for overemphasizing ‘log-ics of appropriateness’ in relations between states. ‘The English School andsome other constructivist analyses’, Stephen Krasner contends, ‘understandinstitutions as generating agents that reinforce or enact, as a result of norma-tive socialization into a common civilization, a particular set of principles,norms, and rules’.2 This sense of a common orientation has been promotedby constructivists and English School scholars themselves. When plottinginternational relations theories against individualist/holist and material-ist/idealist axes, Alexander Wendt places constructivism and the EnglishSchool in the same holist/idealist quadrant, subsuming all theories in thisquadrant under the general rubric of ‘Constructivism’.3 Tim Dunne, promi-nent among the new generation of English School theorists, argues thatthere is ‘an affinity between the international society tradition and the workof constructivists like Alexander Wendt. Both assume the centrality of states,and both interrogate the meaning of international system/society accordingto the intersubjective practices through which it is constituted’.4

There is much that is intuitively plausible about this discourse of con-vergence. It is true that constructivism and the English School share muchin common; particularly interests in the cultural bases of state identity, therule-governed nature of international society, and the variable forms of lifeunder anarchy. None of this should be at all surprising, as constructivistshave explicitly drawn inspiration from Wight, Bull, and others, and newmembers of the English School have often self-consciously aligned withconstructivism to invest the old lineage with new theoretical credibility. Thishaving been said, though, the discourse of convergence has, in large mea-sure, been based on a series of partial or distorted representations. Scholarson both sides have read the literature of the other to find what is both

58


Christian Reus-Smit 59

comfortable and convenient, consciously or unconsciously ignoring othersignificant strands of thought.

When referring to the English School, constructivists focus narrowly onits core ontological propositions. We learn from constructivist depictions ofthe English School that states can come together to form international soci-eties, and that international life is norm- and rule-governed. In the wordsof Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, from the perspective of the EnglishSchool, ‘the international system is a “society” in which states, as a condi-tion of their participation in the system, adhere to shared norms and rulesin a variety of issue areas’.5 Martha Finnemore reiterates this representationwhen she notes that although members of the English School ‘vary in theirclaims about the “thickness” and content of international society, thesescholars agree that at its core lies some principled rules, institutions, andvalues that govern both who is a member of the society and how those mem-bers behave’.6 In outlining the intellectual roots of my own work, I too haveclaimed a motivating ‘interest in Hedley Bull’s idea that sovereign states cannot only form international systems but also international societies’ and inthe notion that ‘modern states share certain elementary interests and valuesand have constructed rules and institutions to express further those goals’.7

While these representations are accurate—in the sense that the EnglishSchool does indeed stress the existence of society among states and theimportance of norms and rules in structuring state identity and conduct—they are partial at best. Obscured altogether is one of the most prominentaspects of English School scholarship—the normative inquiry into the rela-tionship between order and justice in international relations. From Bull’s andVincent’s foundational writings to recent works by Robert Jackson, JamesMayall, Nicholas Wheeler, and Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami,scholars of the English School have consistently explored the potentialfor moral action in a world of sovereign states, fueling an ongoing debatebetween pluralists and solidarists.8 Despite the fact that many constructivistssituate their work within the broad church of critical international theory,9

a hallmark of which is a strong commitment to combining sociological, nor-mative, and praxeological inquiry,10 and despite the clear cosmopolitanismthat motivates much constructivist work, until recently11 little if any attempthas been made to recognize or engage with the normative aspects of EnglishSchool theory. Finnemore notes that much of Bull’s work ‘stems from hisphilosophical examination of the moral implications of order’,12 but thisis a notable exception to the rule and Finnemore herself fails to explore itfurther.

Unfortunately, this practice of selective representation has been more thanreciprocated by English School theorists. A newly arrived Martian, busilysurveying English School writings, could easily be excused for thinking thatWendt’s articles and major book constitute the bulk and essence of con-structivist scholarship. For instance, in seeking to cast the English School


60 Constructivism and the English School

as constructivist, Dunne draws exclusively upon Wendt’s understandingof what this might mean. Even though Wendt’s state-centrism, systemictheorizing, and scientific realism are hotly contested by other construc-tivists, Dunne uncritically treats Wendt’s writings as indicative of ‘the keyelements of constructivism’.13 Similarly, when characterizing and critiquingconstructivism, Jackson refers solely to Wendt’s writings, arguing that he‘captures the mood of constructivism in the study of international rela-tions’.14 Wheeler engages with Friedrich Kratochwil’s seminal writings onnorms and practical reasoning, but still identifies Wendt’s Social Theory ofInternational Politics as the ‘key text on constructivism’, and on this basisaligns himself ‘with the view that the English School and constructivismoccupy the same terrain’.15 Ole Wæver challenges this view on convergence,but he makes exactly the same move in focusing on Wendt while bracketingthe work of other constructivists.16

None of this is meant to suggest that serious consideration of Wendt’scorpus is unwarranted, that English School scholars are alone in focusingon Wendt, or that they never mention other constructivists. Wendt isrightly considered one of constructivism’s leading thinkers, and referencesto other constructivists (such as Ruggie, Kratochwil, Onuf, Finnemore,and Katzenstein) pepper the margins of English School commentaries. Theproblem is that there is a tendency to conflate Wendt’s writings with con-structivism more generally and to treat other constructivists as a chorusamplifying Wendt’s central themes. Just as the constructivist focus on theontology of international society obscures much of the richness of EnglishSchool theory, particularly its normative dimension, the concentration onWendt homogenizes what is actually a very heterogeneous body of construc-tivist scholarship. What emerges is a mistaken view of constructivism asstate-centric, systemic, structuralist, positivistic, and oriented toward com-prehending continuity rather than change. This easily leads to erroneousconclusions, such as Jackson’s claim that constructivists ‘see themselves asinvolved in building a scientific discipline of international relations in a pos-itivist sense’ and ‘do not see themselves as accepting the more modest goalsof a humanistic science of international relations’.17 A broader reading ofconstructivist work shows, to the contrary, that positivism is rejected bymany if not most constructivists.18 As John Ruggie wrote in his celebrated1993 article, grasping the transformations he sought to understand ‘requiresan epistemological posture that is quite different from the imperious claimsof most current bodies of international relations theory’.19

Rich and varied tapestries

The first step in moving beyond this dialogue of stereotypes is to recog-nize the inherent complexity and diversity of both constructivism and theEnglish School. This is not, of course, something that comes easily for



international relations scholars. More than most other social sciences, inter-national relations scholars have constructed their intellectual world alonglines of paradigmatic engagement. We parcel up knowledge into contrastgroups, or paradigms, and then construct scholarly dialogue along lines ofsimilarity and difference. This does have benefits. It helps to clarify lines ofdebate, to establish solid piers for bridge-building, to draw out the proposi-tional differences between approaches, to structure research designs, and soforth. But it inevitably has the unfortunate consequence of encouraging thesimplification of schools of thought, their reduction to relatively unproblem-atic, internally coherent sets of key tenets. As we have seen in the dialoguebetween constructivism and the English School, this can result in significantaspects of each school of thought being lost from view, which greatly reducesthe scope for engagement. Much is to be gained, I suggest, by expanding ourunderstandings of constructivism and the English School, by moving fromsimplification to elaboration. This is best achieved by recognizing that eachschool encompasses significant lines of debate, which make them far richerand varied than the current discourse of representation suggests. This maywell undermine their status as coherent ‘paradigms’, but as Albert Hirschmanobserved in the 1970s, and as Peter Katzenstein and Nobuo Okawara reiter-ated recently, this is often necessary to think creatively and to understandcomplexity.20

Constructivism

Various attempts have been made to capture the diversity of constructivistthought. Ted Hopf draws a distinction between critical and conventionalconstructivists; Price and I have contrasted modern with post-modern con-structivism; and Immanuel Adler, following Lynch and Klotz, distinguishesbetween modern, legal, narrative, and genealogical constructivisms.21 Eachof these categorizations is an effort to bring order to a series of significant dif-ferences, but focusing on the differences themselves may do greater justice tothe complexity of constructivism. Three debates are particularly noteworthy.

The first is between constructivists inspired by sociological institutionalism,Habermasian communicative action theory, and Foucauldian writings onknowledge and power, respectively. The roots of much American construc-tivism lie in sociological institutionalism, an approach originally identifiedwith the work of John Meyer and ‘the Stanford School’ of sociology. Meyer’score proposition is that ‘world culture’ constitutes social agents, affectinghow they define their identities and interests. In Finnemore’s words, ‘thesocial structure is ontologically primary. It is the starting point for analysis.Its rules and values create all actors we might consider relevant in interna-tional politics, including states, firms, organizations, and even individuals.’22

In constructivist theory, this idea is translated into the proposition that‘norms’ constitute state identities and interests. Two of the key ideas animat-ing the chapters in Peter Katzenstein’s edited volume, The Culture of National



Security, are that norms ‘shape the national security interests or (directly)the security policies of states’ and also that they ‘shape state identity’.23

This strand of constructivism has been rightly criticized for being overlystructuralist,24 not because its exponents deny that agents ‘reproduce andreconstruct’ their cultural environments or because they fail to describe suchprocesses in their empirical analyses, but because this aspect of their work islargely untheorized.

If this first variant of constructivism emphasizes ‘logics of appropria-teness’—the constitutive power of norms over interests and behavior—thesecond, ‘Habermasian’ variant stresses ‘logics of argument’, or the role ofcommunicative action in mediating between agents and intersubjectivevalues.25 Norms do not constitute identities and interests in any straightfor-ward or uncomplicated way; in many situations, actors encounter multiplenorms of behavior, open to varied interpretations, some of which contra-dict one another. Contrary to Krasner’s claim that in such situations actorssimply revert to self-interested, power-maximizing behavior,26 Habermasianconstructivists hold that actors generally engage in argument, ‘they try tofigure out in a collective communicative process (1) whether their assump-tions about the world and about cause-and-effect relationships in the worldare correct (the realm of theoretical discourses); or (2) whether norms ofappropriate behavior can be justified, and which norms apply under givencircumstances (the realm of practical discourses)’.27 Such communicativeaction is never random, actors reason out from agreed upon precepts ofaction to establish collectively acceptable rules of conduct for the situation athand. ‘Contestants enter the discourse with different values and they all tryto justify their values (as right and true). They do this by resorting to valueshigher than those which they want to justify, by proving that the latter arebut an interpretation of the higher values, or that they can be related tothese values without logical contradiction.’28

The third variant of constructivism draws inspiration from Foucauldianarguments about knowledge and power. ‘For Foucault’, Richard Price argues,‘the production of discourses is a form of power, as it constructs categoriesthat themselves make a cluster of practices and understandings seem illegit-imate or even inconceivable. This disciplinary power defines what is normaland natural and what is unthinkable and reprehensible.’29 The implicationsof this for the study of norms and their impact on the self-understandingsand preferences of actors are profound, as it suggests that the origins ofnorms, and the meanings they acquire at particular times and in particu-lar contexts, are discursively, and hence politically, contingent rather thanthe product of rational evolution. For this reason, exponents of this form ofconstructivism employ a distinctive ‘genealogical’ method in their inquiries,a method that ‘is strategically aimed at that which looks unproblematic andis held to be timeless; its task is to explain how these present traits, in alltheir vigour and truth, were formed out of the past’.30



This first, largely ontological debate is paralleled by a second line of dif-ference between constructivists, that concerning levels of analysis. Wendt isone of the few constructivists to espouse pure systemic theorizing, drawinga sharp distinction between the international and the domestic realms andexplicitly bracketing the latter as theoretically irrelevant.31 He distinguishesbetween the social and the corporate identities of the state: the social refer-ring to the status, role, or personality that international society ascribes to astate; the corporate referring to the internal human, material, ideological, orcultural factors that make a state what it is. Just as a theory of the market doesnot require a theory of the firm, or that of society one of the human body,Wendt argues that a constructivist theory of international relations can focusjust on the social identity of the state and ignore the domestic realm. Thisapproach contrasts sharply with that of unit-level constructivists, who con-centrate on the relationship between domestic social and legal norms andthe identities, interests, and actions of states.32 For instance, in seeking toexplain differences in Germany’s and Japan’s responses to domestic ter-rorism, Katzenstein argues that the former’s ‘strengthening of state powerthrough changes in legal norms betrays a deep-seated fear that terrorismchallenges the core of the state’, while the latter’s ‘close interaction of socialand legal norms reveals a state living symbiotically within its society and noteasily shaken to its foundation’.33 A third group of ‘holistic’ constructivistshave discarded the dichotomy between the international and the domesticand tried to bring them together into a unified analytical perspective thattreats the internal and the external as two faces of a single social and polit-ical order.34 This work is exemplified by John Ruggie’s study of the rise ofsovereign states out of the wreck of medieval Europe and by Rodney Hall’swork on the emergence of ‘national sovereign identity’ and the constitutionof the modern international system.35

The final axis of difference between constructivists concerns methodology.Early constructivists insisted that studying the role of ideas, norms, and cul-ture in world politics demanded an interpretive methodology, as the actorsunder investigation attach meanings to their actions; these meanings areshaped by a pre-existing field of intersubjective meanings embedded in lan-guage and other symbols, and the effect of such meanings on human actioncannot be understood objectively by treating them as measurable variablesthat cause behavior in any direct or quantifiable manner.36 An interpretivemethodology requires scholars to grasp ‘the relationship between “intersub-jective meanings” which derive from self-interpretation and self-definition,and the social practices in which they are embedded and which theyconstitute’.37 Under this interpretive umbrella, however, lies considerablediversity. Habermasian constructivists tend to focus on the reconstructionof the meanings social actors use to interpret actions and contexts, whilethose who follow Foucault tend to concentrate on explicating the discursivestructures that constitute social power. This argument that an ontological



emphasis on ideas, norms, culture, discourse, and argument requires a dis-tinctive methodology has been challenged more recently by ‘methodologicalconventionalists’, who claim that their explanations ‘do not depend excep-tionally upon any specialized separate “interpretive methodology”’.38 Mostof these scholars are driven by simple pragmatism, by a desire to movebeyond meta-theoretical debate to concrete empirical analysis.39 Wendt,however, devotes considerable space to elaborating (mistakenly some wouldsay) an epistemological posture of ‘scientific realism’ that will support hismethodological commitment to conventional, positivist social science.40

The differences between interpretive and positivist constructivists are mostapparent in the contrasts between those studies that employ quantitativemethodological techniques and those who adopt a genealogical approach.41

These three axes of debate belie the English School’s ‘Wendtian’ represen-tation of constructivism. Although Wendt addresses the linguistic dimensionof social life, his work is grounded principally in sociological institutional-ism. He is virtually alone in espousing third image, systemic theorizing. Andhis enthusiastic embrace of positivism places him at odds with the largenumber of interpretive constructivists. If English School scholars had usedOnuf’s, Ruggie’s, or Kratochwil’s writing as reference points, the bridges theyhave sought to build with constructivism would have had to be designedand constructed differently, and some of their criticisms of constructivismwould have had to be recast.

The English School

Recent attempts to revive the English School as a dynamic perspective onworld politics have provoked ongoing debate about who were the School’scanonical figures, about the meaning of their writings, about what consti-tutes the School’s core ideas, and about how it ought to evolve from nowon. Should E. H. Carr be included in the pantheon? Were Bull’s writingsbecoming more cosmopolitan, perhaps even critical, at the time of hisdeath? Was the English School’s central proposition really that states canform societies, or was it something else? Can a new English School everbe more than an umbrella for a broad but loosely defined range of anti-rationalist, anti-positivist scholarship? Here is not the place to Canvass thefull spectrum of these debates, but three axes of difference warrant attention.

The first is between solidarists and pluralists. Bull laid the foundations forthis debate in his early chapter, ‘The Grotian Conception of InternationalSociety’. There is a fundamental distinction, he argued, between those whosee international society as bound together in solidarity by common valuesand purposes and those who hold that states have a plurality of differ-ent purposes and that international society rests solely on the observanceof common rules of coexistence.42 This distinction has since provided thebasic framework for debate within the English School about the scope for,and desirability of, moral action in international relations, a debate which



itself marks the School off from parallel trends in American thinking.43

Wheeler’s impressive book on humanitarian intervention, Saving Strangers,is not only built around the distinction between solidarism and pluralism;he searches for evidence of a new solidarism in international relations of thelast decade, and when he finds only partial movement in this direction, hemarshals a strong normative argument for greater solidarist consciousnessand action.44 This contrasts with Jackson’s recent work, The Global Covenant,which identifies two enduring forms of pluralism in contemporary worldpolitics. International society is, first and foremost, ‘an association of multi-ple political authorities based on the values of equal sovereignty, territorialintegrity, and non-intervention of member states’.45 It is also ‘an arrange-ment in which the domestic affairs of states are their own affair, whichmeans that statespeople and citizens are free to compose their own domesticvalues and orchestrate them in their own way’.46 For Jackson, the norma-tive goal is not to override this pluralism with solidarist politics—a strategyfraught with danger—but to recognize and promote the unique, ‘situational’ethics of such a world, an ethics based on ‘the dialogue and mutual give andtake of sovereign states expressed via diplomatic practice, international law,and the political virtues embodied by the ethics of statecraft’.47

The second axis of difference concerns the relationship between theEnglish School and the theory of international society. For many outsiders—including most constructivists—the proposition that sovereign states canform international societies is the School’s leitmotiv, with Bull’s evocativetitle, The Anarchical Society, read as capturing the paradox of a society with-out central authority. Yet this has become an important point of contentionamong contemporary English School theorists. There are those, like Dunne,who identify the School with the idea of international society. Having calledhis history of the English School Inventing International Society, Dunne pointsto how Herbert Butterfield’s minutes of early meetings of the British Com-mittee of International Theory ‘record the consensus which had emerged inthe early meetings around the idea that sovereign states constituted a soci-ety’.48 And when seeking to align the English School with constructivism, heargues that ‘the notion of a society of states is founded precisely on a beliefin the power of inter-subjective structures such as common rules, values andinstitutions’.49 There is, however, an ambiguity in the writings of Wight,Bull, and others which opens space for an alternative interpretation of theSchool’s attachment to the idea of international society. Bull argued thatthe ‘modern international system in fact reflects all three of the elementssingled out, respectively, by the Hobbesian, the Kantian and the Grotiantraditions: the element of war and struggle for power among states, the ele-ment of transnational solidarity and conflict, cutting across the divisionsamong states, and the element of co-operation and regulated intercourseamong states’.50 This has encouraged some scholars to see the English Schoolas more eclectic than is commonly assumed. Richard Little argues that in



the writings of Wight and Bull ‘[n]one of the elements are given ontolog-ical priority. It is assumed that they are operating within a single complexreality . . . Although attention may be focused on only one of these elements,it must never be forgotten that this element is lodged in the context of theother two’.51

The final debate among English School scholars is methodological. In seek-ing to rejuvenate the School, critically inclined scholars have pointed toBull’s celebrated defense of a ‘classical approach’, as well as the historical,philosophical, and legal reflections of canonical figures, to suggest that theSchool fits within the broad family of reflectivist or interpretivist approaches.As one of the three ‘preliminary articles of the English School’, Dunne iden-tifies ‘an interpretive approach’ as central, and argues that [f]or ‘the EnglishSchool, the most important questions about international relations were notamenable to empirical verification (as the would-be scientists demanded)’.52

Roger Epp contends that its ‘hermeneutic orientation . . . is at its best thesource of a distinctive attentiveness to language, an openness to the world,and a critical cultural and disciplinary reflexivity’.53 What is meant by reflec-tion or interpretation in the English School is decidedly unclear, however.Positivism, behavioralism, and quantification are generally rejected, butbeyond this most English School scholarship appears methodologically con-ventional. The idea of empirical verification, for example, is alive and wellin such scholarship,54 and the position of most scholars is not dissimi-lar from Wendt’s scientific realist approach to social phenomena, such asnorms, rules, and institutions. The attempt to define the English School aspost-positivist has been rejected by those who see it as methodologicallyeclectic. Building on his argument that Wight, Bull and others saw realist,Grotian, and Kantian dimensions of international relations coexisting, Littleclaims that this ontological pluralism led them to methodological pluralism:‘International societies and international systems . . . rest on very differentontological assumptions and, as a consequence, they need to be examinedby means of very different methodologies.’55 Although methodologicallyunselfconscious, the English School should thus be seen as employing anarray of methodological tools, from the positivist to the interpretive. ‘A com-prehensive assessment of the work presented by members of the EnglishSchool’, Little concludes, ‘makes it clear that they rely on interpretivist,positivist and critical assumptions’.56

The English School has long been seen as a via media between realism andrevolutionism, between Hobbesianism and Kantianism. Yet the precedingdiscussion suggests that contemporary debates make its members difficultto situate. Where does one place interpretive-solidarists? Would they be inthe same locale as positivist-pluralists? And where would one place a scholarwho is methodologically eclectic and believes that an international system,international society, and world society coexist? However one answers thesequestions, the crucial point here is that the standard constructivist depiction



of the English School presents a narrow, monotone image of what is a richand contested realm of thought.

Learning from diversity

Exposing the principle lines of difference within both constructivism andthe English School may be anathema to some, undermining as it doestheir integrity as coherent theoretical paradigms. It has the virtue, though,of revealing potentially fruitful sites of engagement. In particular, it hashighlighted aspects of each school of thought that can greatly benefitthe other. Constructivism can be enriched by learning from the EnglishSchool’s normative reflections, and the sociological foundations of thosereflections can be greatly enhanced by integrating constructivist ideas aboutcommunicative action and holistic inquiry.

From the theory of norms to normative theory

There is a certain coyness about much constructivist writing. Constructivistsare united by their emphasis on the role of intersubjective values in consti-tuting social actors and action, and much of their empirical research focuseson the development and impact of cosmopolitan or liberal values, such ashuman rights, arms control, environmental protection, multilateralism, andinternational law. Yet the fact that this explicit analytical interest in normscoexists with an implicit normative sympathy for, and commitment to, these‘progressive’ values is seldom admitted, let alone justified. Although Wendtlocates himself within the critical tradition, he goes to some lengths to asserthis social scientific objectivity. His brand of ‘idealism’ is ‘not a normativeview of how the world ought to be, but a scientific view of how it is. Idealismaims to be just as realistic as materialism’.57 Such categorical statements arerare, but most constructivists remain backward about coming forward withtheir values. Constructivists have often worked at the hard edge of humanmisery,58 showing how humanitarian norms can be constructed and pro-duce real, valuable change. Yet the clear normative sympathies and purposesthat lie behind this research are generally left unspoken.59 Only recentlyhave constructivists confronted their own normativity directly, seeking toelaborate a distinctive constructivist contribution to normative theorizing.60

A good example of this tendency to date is Margaret Keck and KathrynSikkink’s excellent study, Activists Beyond Borders, which won the prestigiousand lucrative Grawemeyer Prize for a scholarly contribution to internationalpeace and cooperation. Driven to explain why some authoritarian regimes,with horrendous human rights records, eventually reform and others donot, Keck and Sikkink focus on the crucial role played by transnationaladvocacy networks. ‘A transnational advocacy network includes those rel-evant actors working internationally on an issue, who are bound togetherby shared values, a common discourse, and dense exchanges of information



and services.’61 These networks generally lack material power, but they bringabout change through strategies of persuasion and socialization, employing‘information politics’, ‘symbolic politics’, ‘leverage politics’, and ‘account-ability politics’.62 Each of these strategies is designed to condition thenormative environment in which states act, clarifying and promoting inter-national norms and exposing the dissonance between standards and stateconduct. ‘No mere “enactors,” these are people who seek to amplify thegenerative power of norms, broaden the scope of practices those normsengender, and sometimes even renegotiate or transform the norms them-selves’.63 After examining historical precursors to transnational advocacynetworks, and then the operation of such networks in the fields of humanrights, the environment, and women’s rights, Keck and Sikkink argue thatwe need to move beyond the simple imagery of a society of states. They find‘that enough evidence of change in the relationships among actors, institu-tions, norms, and ideas exists to make the world political system rather thanan international society of states the appropriate level of analysis’.64

The analytical purpose of Keck and Sikkink’s book is the explication ofa particular set of political relationships between the states that compriseinternational society, the agents that operate within world society to condi-tion the internal and the external conduct of states, and the norms codifiedin international society’s legal order, but whose origins and force lies inthe activism of agents in world society. Yet the power of their argumentalso derives from the normative project that clearly underlies it—if wecan understand when and how transnational advocacy networks produceimprovements in the behavior of states, we can encourage developmentsalong these lines and this will ultimately reduce pathological state behavior,which is clearly a good thing. This normative project is never explicitlystated or defended, though. One might respond that this is hardly necessary,that understanding and promoting the mechanisms that encourage lessdestructive state conduct is a patent good. While I certainly subscribe to thisview, and so too might this chapter’s readership, it is not clear that this is uni-versally the case. For significant numbers of citizens in many states, networksof local NGOs, who reach outside of state boundaries to appeal to interna-tional norms, and the transnational NGOs and international organizationswho assist them, are inherently illegitimate, anti-democratic, and a sad indi-cator of declining sovereignty in the face of encroaching globalization. Thereis a great risk, therefore, that the new transnational normative politics willrun into a profound legitimation crisis. If this concerns constructivists suchas Keck and Sikkink, then they must take seriously the need to match therigor of their empirical analyses of normative politics with an equally rigor-ous defense of their implicit normative agenda. For ultimately only such adefense can legitimate the politics they observe and wish to encourage.

It is here that constructivists have most to learn from the English School.As we have seen, they have all but ignored the normative aspect of the



School’s scholarship, failing to recognize or engage with its concern for theempirical and ethical scope of moral action in a world of sovereign states.I will argue below that there is much that is problematic about the ongo-ing debate between pluralists and solidarists, and that sociological aspectsof constructivist thought can help the English School move beyond thisdichotomy. The fact remains, however, that English School theorists havesteadfastly attempted something that constructivists have shied away from:systematic reflection on the nature of international social and political life,what constitutes ethical conduct in such a world, and how this might berealized. Whether they begin, as pluralists do, by assuming the robustnessand autonomy of a society of sovereign states, and then argue that only asituational ethics is possible and desirable in such a world, or whether theyfocus on the legitimation needs of such a society, as do solidarists, and con-clude that more cosmopolitan ethics are needed both morally and to sustainthe society of states, English School scholars have meditated long and hardon the relationship between ontology and morality.

I am not suggesting here that constructivists should uncritically absorbone or more of the English School’s normative arguments, but rather thatthey can learn from the mode of reflection and reasoning adopted by suchscholars. Specifying what this might mean in practice is beyond the scopeof this chapter,65 but four questions might fruitfully guide further inquiry:How do domestic and international norms of legitimate statehood condi-tion the identity of states and their realms of rightful internal and externalconduct? How are these norms shaped and mobilized by domestic, interna-tional, and transnational actors, and under what conditions? What type ofmoral action is possible in such a universe of norms and action? And howcan existing mechanisms and avenues of normative change be exploited toenhance human justice while cultivating global peace and security?

Beyond pluralism and solidarism

If constructivists can learn from the English School’s reflections on the scopefor moral action in world politics, English School theorists can in turnlearn much from constructivists about the correct sociological bases of suchreflections. From the standpoint of constructivism, the dichotomous debatebetween pluralists and solidarists rests on shaky ontological foundations.More specifically, the pluralist pole, which is still vigorously defended byleading members of the School and which serves as the ‘null hypothesis’for others, is at odds with many insights of communicative action theoryand holistic constructivist scholarship. Constructivist applications of com-municative action theory problematizes the pluralist distinction betweenpractical and purposive international societies, and in turn its thesis aboutthe nature of the international institutional order. Holistic constructivismchallenges the segregation of international society from world society whichis so essential to the pluralist thesis. And both communicative action theory



and constructivist holism raise doubts about the whole idea of situationalethics. If this is true, then the default pole of the pluralist/solidarist debateweakens to the point of collapse, and English School scholars are compelledto occupy a much more variegated realm of sociologically informed ethicaland political reasoning.

The defining claim of pluralist international society theory is thatsovereign states form a ‘practical’ association, ‘a relationship among thoseengaged in the pursuit of different and possibly incompatible purposes, andwho are associated with one another, if at all, only in respecting certainrestrictions on how each may pursue his own purposes’.66 The warp andweft of international society are the ‘authoritative practices’ that enablestates with different goals, values, and objectives to coexist and cooper-ate, practices such as diplomacy and international law. These institutions,in James Mayall’s words, enable states to ‘rub along together’.67 The imagehere is of sovereign states with different identities and interests workingto maintain a pluralist, practical association, the framework of which is aweb of functional, procedural institutions. Elegant as this is, constructivistshave shown that the step from diverse identities to institutional order ishighly problematic.68 As English School theorists have themselves noted, thefoundation of international society is mutual recognition, the use of stan-dards of legitimate statehood to determine which polities will be grantedthe entitlements of sovereign statehood. A deep politics of identity thusundergirds international society, determining its membership.

More than this, though, prevailing ideals of legitimate state identityare inextricably linked to the nature of the institutions states constructto facilitate coexistence and cooperation. Historically, different interna-tional societies, in which different ideals of legitimate statehood prevailed,have developed different institutional orders, with multilateral diplomacyand contractual international law only emerging in a world where lib-eral states, and their principles of governance, have been ascendant.69

Once one admits that identity politics is constitutive of both the mem-bership and the institutional architecture of international societies, thenthe whole pluralist/solidarist dichotomy begins to crumble. Ideals of legiti-mate statehood always incorporate and prescribe procedural and substantivevalues of governance; liberal ideals do not only prescribe decision-makingprocedures—such as citizens or their representatives should legislate laws—but also positive values, from the protection of human rights to thepromotion of economic development. Interestingly, it was Wight, writingbefore the English School became so structured by the pluralist/solidaristdichotomy, who understood most clearly this connection between identity,substantive values, mutual recognition, and institutional order.70

Pluralist international society theory also rests on the assumption thatinternational society can be understood as a discrete social realm, with rela-tive autonomy from the actors, structures and processes of the surrounding



world society. This assumption is necessary to sustain the development ofa distinctive political and ethical theory of international society, a ‘politi-cal theory of international relations understood as a “society” with its owndistinctive standards of conduct’.71 Because of this, pluralists go to somelength to deny that world society is encroaching on international society. InJackson’s words, ‘[w]orld society is . . . a client of the society of states ratherthan the reverse’.72 This claim rests on the concomitant idea that non-stateactors do not fundamentally alter the basic principles and dynamics of thesociety of sovereign states. Here the question is almost always posed in termsof whether or not non-state actors are displacing the primacy of sovereignstates, with pluralists supposedly winning the broader argument by claimingthat this is not the case. According to Jackson, ‘any claim that a “global civilsociety”, consisting of such actors and networks, is displacing global interna-tional society based on sovereign states seriously misconstrues the characterof international society’.73

Posing the question in this way, however, is fundamentally misleading. Tosustain the idea of international society as a discrete social realm, warrantingits own distinctive political and ethical theory, one needs to show that actorsin world society do not influence the basic principles and dynamics of inter-national society, not that they have ‘displaced’ that society. Constructivists,like Keck and Sikkink, have shown, through sustained empirical investi-gation that actors in world society indeed exert such influence. Arguingthat sovereignty is an inherently variable principle, the meaning of whichchanges from one historical context to another, they have documentedhow non-state actors have worked to shape the domestic and internationalnormative contexts in which states constitute their identities, define theirinterests, and conduct their relations. If international society is penetratedand structured in this way, with non-state actors in world society workingas ‘norm-entrepreneurs’ to shape the most basic principles of the society ofstates, then it is increasingly difficult to sustain the idea of international soci-ety as a discrete social realm, and even harder to justify limiting the politicaltheory of international relations to this domain.

Finally, pluralist international society theorists build on their propositionsabout the practical nature of society among states and the relative autonomyof the international social realm to advocate a ‘situational’ ethics of interna-tional relations. ‘This is not the ethics of the ideal choice or the best choice oreven the least costly choice. And it is not moral relativism in which commonstandards of conduct are abandoned. Rather, it is the ethics of the best choicein the circumstances, or perhaps the least damaging choice if in the circum-stances prevailing at the time all choices are deplorable and destructive tosome degree—which is common in war.’74 On the part of political leaders,such ethics involves the ‘virtue’ of prudence: the ‘self-regarding’ prudenceof caution in times of national danger and the ‘other-regarding’ prudence ofavoiding harm to others in the exercise of one’s foreign policy. On the part



of scholars judging the actions of such leaders, it means avoiding slavishattention to rules or consequences and a focus instead on ‘what we couldreasonably expect of a person of sound mind and good character in suchcircumstances’.75 As we have seen, the ontological foundations of this ethicshave been brought into question by recent constructivist scholarship, but itis problematic in other respects as well.

In particular, it is based on an insufficiently developed understanding ofthe nature of moral choice in world politics. To begin with, when a polit-ical leader makes a foreign policy decision in a difficult context, he or sheseeks to maximize a particular set of political values within the constraintsand opportunities of existing circumstances. No one would rightly suggestthat the contextual nature of this decision is irrelevant to judging its ethi-cal status, but a crucial part of our judgement must be an assessment of thevalues pursued, and this can only be done with reference to some abstractstandard of the right or the good. Judgements about whether to engagein humanitarian interventions are partly based on the constraints of con-text, but also about whether we have moral obligations beyond borders, andthis cannot be decided situationally. Second, the values that political leadersseek to maximize are not personal or private, they are public, in the senseof being proffered in the name of the national interest, and social, in thesense of having been formed, articulated, and justified in contexts of inter-subjective debate and dialogue. Even if situational ethics were appropriatein post facto evaluations, more abstract ethical arguments about rightfulaction (made by scholars, activists, and policy-makers themselves) play acrucial role in shaping the intersubjective debate that conditions the valuespolitical leaders pursue.

Conclusion

This chapter has surveyed the evolving relationship between constructivismand the English School, highlighting the partial representations that eachmakes of the other, the actual richness of both schools of thought, andthe ways in which both can learn from aspects of the other that theyhave previously ignored or downplayed. Constructivism, I have argued, hasmuch to learn from how English School theorists have merged ontologicaland normative analyses to reflect on the scope of moral action in a worldof sovereign states. In turn, English School theorists can draw on thecommunicative and holistic dimensions of constructivism to move beyondthe current dichotomy between pluralism and solidarism. This is essentiallya call for constructivists to become more normative and English School theo-rists to become more sociological, with both converging on the broad terrainof ‘practical reason’. In the five years since the earlier version of this chap-ter was published, both schools of thought have taken decisive steps in thisdirection.76 Early theorists of international relations, of whom E. H. Carr was



an exemplar, took for granted that their new discipline was to serve norma-tive ends, such as peace and security: it was to be a ‘science not only of whatis, but what ought to be’.77 This bringing together of the empirical and thenormative was thought essential to the determination and conduct of prac-tical international action, for interests cannot be defined without values, orstrategies devised without knowledge. Because of their respective limitations,both constructivism and the English School still fall short of this standardof practical reason. Placing strands of them in dialogue, however, may bringthem both closer to this ideal. But this must be a dialogue that recognizesthe complexity and diversity of both schools of thought, one that movesbeyond the current unproductive dialogue of stereotypes.


1. This chapter is a modified and updated version of my ‘Imagining Society: Con-structivism and the English School’, British Journal of Politics and InternationalRelations, 4 (2002), pp. 487–509.

2. Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1999), p. 71.

3. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999), pp. 31–2. See also Martha Finnemore, National Interests inInternational Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Martha Finnemore,‘Norms, Culture, and World Politics: Insights from Sociology’s Institutionalism’,International Organization, 50 (1996); and Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Pur-pose of the State: Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in InternationalRelations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 5.

4. Timothy Dunne, ‘The Social Construction of International Society’, European Jour-nal of International Relations, 1 (1995), p. 384; and Timothy Dunne, InventingInternational Society: A History of the English School (London: Macmillan, 1998),pp. 187–90.

5. Ronald L. Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter J. Katzenstein, ‘Norms, Iden-tity, and Culture in National Security’, in Peter J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Cultureof National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1996), p. 45.

6. Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, p. 18.7. Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose of the State, p. xi.8. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London:

Macmillan, 1977); Hedley Bull, ‘The Concept of Justice in InternationalRelations’, 1983–84 Hagey Lectures (Waterloo: University of Waterloo, 1984);R. J. Vincent, Non-Intervention and International Order (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1974); R. J. Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Robert Jackson, The GlobalCovenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2000); James Mayall, World Politics: Progress and Its Limits (Cambridge: Polity Press,2000); Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in Inter-national Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Andrew Linklater andHidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations: A ContemporaryReassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).



9. Richard Price and Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Dangerous Liaisons? Critical InternationalTheory and Constructivism’, European Journal of International Relations, 4 (1998);Alexander Wendt, ‘Constructing International Politics’, International Security, 20(1995).

10. Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations ofthe Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998).

11. Richard Price, Moral Limit and Possibility in World Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2008).

12. Finnemore, National Interests in International Society, p. 18.13. Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 187; Timothy Dunne, ‘Sociological Inves-

tigations: Instrumental, Legitimist, and Coercive Interpretations of InternationalSociety’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 30 (2001), p. 70.

14. Jackson, The Global Covenant, pp. 53–5.15. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, pp. 4, 6.16. Ole Wæver, ‘The English School’s Contribution to the Study of International Rela-

tions’, paper presented at the 24th Annual Conference of the British InternationalStudies Association, Manchester, 20–22 December 1999, p. 6.

17. Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 54.18. Friedrich Kratochwil and John Gerard Ruggie, ‘International Organization: A State

of the Art on an Art of the State’, International Organization, 40 (1986); John GerardRuggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in InternationalRelations’, International Organization, 47 (1993); Price and Reus-Smit, ‘DangerousLiaisons?’; Friedrich Kratochwil, ‘Constructing a New Orthodoxy? Wendt’s “SocialTheory of International Politics” and the Constructivist Challenge’, Millennium:Journal of International Studies, 29 (2000); Price, Moral Limit and Possibility.

19. Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond’, p. 169.20. Albert O. Hirschman, ‘The Search for Paradigms as a Hindrance to Understand-

ing’, in Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (eds), Interpretive Social Science:A Reader (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); Peter J. Katzensteinand Nobuo Okawara, ‘Japan, Asian-Pacific Security, and the Case for AnalyticalEclecticism’, International Security, 26 (2001/2002); Peter J. Katzenstein and RudraSil, ‘Eclectic Theorizing in the Study and Practice of International Relations’, inChristian Reus-Smit and Duncan Snidal (eds), The Oxford Handbook of InternationalRelations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

21. Ted Hopf, ‘The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory’,International Security, 23 (1998); Price and Reus-Smit, ‘Dangerous Liaisons?’;Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Constructivism’, in Scott Burchill, Richard Devetak, AndrewLinklater, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit, and Jacqui True, Theories ofInternational Relations, 2nd edn. (London: Palgrave, 2001); Immanuel Adler, ‘Seiz-ing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics’, European Journal ofInternational Relations, 3 (1997); Cecilia Lynch and Audie Klotz, ‘Constructivism:Past Agendas and Future Directions’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting ofthe American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1996.

22. Finnemore, ‘Norms, Culture, and World Politics’, p. 333.23. Jepperson, Wendt and Katzenstein, ‘Norms, Identity, and Culture’, p. 52.24. Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory’,

World Politics, 50 (1998), pp. 340–2.25. Friedrich Kratochwil, Rules, Norms, and Decisions (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1989); Nicholas Onuf, A World of Our Making (Columbia:



University of South Carolina Press, 1989); Michael Barnett, Dialogues in Arab Pol-itics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998); Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose ofthe State; Christian Reus-Smit (ed.), The Politics of International Law (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2004); Thomas Risse, ‘ “Let’s Argue!”: Communica-tive Action in World Politics’, International Organization, 54 (2000); Marc Lynch,State Interests and Public Spheres (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999); MarcLynch, Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

26. Krasner, Sovereignty, p. 6.27. Risse, ‘ “Let’s Argue!” ’, p. 7.28. Agnes Heller, Beyond Justice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 239.29. Richard Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1997), p. 9.30. Jens Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1995), p. 73.31. Alexander Wendt, ‘Collective Identity Formation and the International State’,

American Political Science Review, 88 (1994); Wendt, Social Theory of InternationalPolitics.

32. Peter J. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military inPostwar Japan (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Peter J. Katzenstein, TamedPower: Germany in Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).

33. Katzenstein, Cultural Norms, pp. 153–4.34. Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond’; Rey Koslowski and Friedrich Kratochwil,

‘Understanding Change in International Politics: The Soviet Empire’s Demiseand the International System’, in R. N. Lebow and T. Risse-Kappen (eds), Inter-national Relations Theory After the Cold War (New York: Columbia University Press,1995); Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose of the State; Rodney Bruce Hall, National CollectiveIdentity: Social Constructs and International Systems (New York: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1999); Heather Rae, State Identities and the Homogenisation of Peoples(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

35. John Gerard Ruggie, ‘Continuity and Transformation in the World Polity: Towarda Neorealist Synthesis’, in Robert O. Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1986); Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond’; Hall,National Collective Identity.

36. Kratochwil and Ruggie, ‘International Organization’; Friedrich Kratochwil,‘Regimes, Interpretation and the “Science” of Politics: A Reappraisal’, Millennium:Journal of International Studies, 17 (1988/1989); Mark Neufeld, ‘Interpretationand the “Science” of International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 19(1993); Richard Price, ‘Interpretation and Disciplinary Orthodoxy in InternationalRelations’, Review of International Studies, 20 (1994).

37. Neufeld, ‘Interpretation and the “Science” of International Relations’, p. 49.38. Jepperson, Wendt, and Katzenstein, ‘Norms, Identity, and Culture’, p. 67.39. Ibid., p. 67.40. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.41. Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chi-

nese History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Lars-Erik Cederman,Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Bartelson, A Genealogy of Sovereignty;Price, The Chemical Weapons Taboo.



42. Hedley Bull, ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in HerbertButterfield and Martin Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations (London: GeorgeAllen and Unwin, 1966).

43. Terry Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 1983); Vincent, Human Rights and International Relations;Nicholas Wheeler and Timothy Dunne, ‘Hedley Bull’s Pluralism of the Intellectand Solidarism of the Will’, International Affairs, 72 (1996); Dunne, Inventing Inter-national Society; Jackson, The Global Covenant; Mayall, World Politics; Wheeler, Sav-ing Strangers; Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations.

44. Wheeler, Saving Strangers.45. Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 178.46. Ibid., p. 179.47. Ibid., p. 181.48. Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 183.49. Ibid., p. 188.50. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 39.51. Richard Little, ‘The English School’s Contribution to the Study of International

Relations’, European Journal of International Relations, 6 (2000), p. 402; Barry Buzan,‘The English School as a Research Program’, paper presented at the annual con-ference of the British International Studies Association, Manchester, 1999, p. 5.

52. Dunne, Inventing International Society, p. 7.53. Roger Epp, ‘The English School on the Frontiers of International Relations’, Review

of International Studies, 24:Special Issue (1998), p. 63.54. See Wheeler, Saving Strangers; Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2005); Ian Clark, International Legitimacy in World Society(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

55. Little, ‘The English School’s Contribution’, p. 408.56. Ibid., p. 398; Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism: Critical International

Theory and International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1990), pp. 15–21; Linklaterand Suganami, The English School of International Relations.

57. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 24.58. Audie Klotz, Norms in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,

1995); Richard Price, ‘Reversing the Gun Sights: Transnational Civil SocietyTargets Land Mines’, International Organization, 52 (1998); Margaret Keck andKathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Pol-itics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); Rae, State Identities; Thomas Risse,Stephen Ropp and Kathryn Sikkink (eds), The Power of Human Rights (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2000).

59. Price and Reus-Smit, ‘Dangerous Liaisons?’; Richard Shapcott, ‘Solidarism andAfter: Global Governance, International Society and the Normative “Turn” inInternational Relations’, Pacifica Review, 12 (2000); Christian Reus-Smit, ‘In Dia-logue on the Ethic of Consensus: A Reply to Shapcott’, Pacifica Review, 12 (2000);Richard Shapcott, ‘A Response to Christian Reus-Smit’, Pacifica Review, 12 (2000).

60. See the essays by leading constructivists in Price, Moral Limit and Possibility.61. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, p. 2.62. Ibid., p. 16.63. Ibid., p. 35.64. Ibid., p. 212.



65. For an elaboration, see Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Constructivism and the Structureof Ethical Reasoning’, in Richard Price (ed.), Moral Limit and Possibility in WorldPolitics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

66. Nardin, Law, Morality, and the Relations of States, p. 9.67. Mayall, World Politics, p. 29.68. John Gerard Ruggie, ‘Multilateralism: The Anatomy of an Institution’, in John

Gerard Ruggie (ed.), Multilateralism Matters: The Theory and Praxis of an InstitutionalForm (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Christian Reus-Smit, ‘TheConstitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamen-tal Institutions’, International Organization, 51 (1997); Reus-Smit, Moral Purpose ofthe State.

69. Reus-Smit, ‘Constitutional Structure of International Society’; Reus-Smit, MoralPurpose of the State; Ruggie, ‘Multilateralism’.

70. Martin Wight, Systems of States (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977).71. Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 97.72. Robert Jackson, ‘The Political Theory of International Society’, in Ken Booth and

Steve Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today (Cambridge: Polity, 1995),p. 111.

73. Jackson, The Global Covenant, p. 107.74. Ibid., p. 147.75. Jackson, ‘Political Theory of International Society’, p. 126.76. See Price, Moral Limit and Possibility; Barry Buzan, From International to World

Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).77. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis: 1919–1939 (New York: Harper and Row,

1946), p. 5.


4History, Theory and MethodologicalPluralism in the English SchoolRichard Little

General interest in the English School’s (ES) approach to internationalrelations has increased steadily over the past two decades, along with thenumber of its adherents. These two trends have given rise to contradictorydevelopments. On the one hand, the growing interest in the ES has meantthat there are now recurrent attempts by non-ES theorists to locate the ES inthe pantheon of IR theory. In the process, however, much of the complexityand variation of the theory is lost. In the interests of providing an unam-biguous image of the ES that is clearly differentiated from other approachesto international relations, key elements of its multidimensional theoreticalperspective are excised to reveal what is considered to be the main core ofthe theory. Almost invariably when this happens, the ES is associated witheither a purely norm-driven or an institutional conception of internationalrelations. On the other hand, internal differentiation within the school hasdeveloped as the ES has attracted a growing number of adherents. Indeed,Buzan argues that there are now at least three different ways of understand-ing ES theory.1 ES theory may be considered first as a set of ideas to be foundin the minds of statesmen; second, as a set of ideas to be found in the mindsof political theorists; and third, as a set of externally imposed concepts thatdefine the material and social structures of the international system.2

Although Buzan believes that the ES has the potential to develop a power-ful general theory of international relations, he also argues that the approachas it currently stands conflates normative and empirical strands of thought.What he wants to do is unravel these two strands and follow the empir-ical line of thought, thereby using the ES to provide ‘the building blocksfor a methodologically pluralist grand theory of IR’.3 Buzan is certainly notopposed to normative thinking in IR, but in line with his adherence to apositivist methodology, he insists on the need to distinguish between empir-ical and normative theory. His aim is to clarify and extend the empiricalapproach to IR theory but he also challenges normative ES theorists to dothe same for their approach to theory.

78


Richard Little 79

Buzan demonstrates, successfully, that some of the limitations of EStheory ‘hinge in one way or another around the weakly developed worldsociety pillar’.4 He endeavours to rectify these limitations by making aclear distinction between international society and world society and thendifferentiating world society ontologically in terms of interhuman andtransnational societies. But although Buzan takes advantage of and extendsthe ontological diversity that characterises ES theory, he does so at theexpense of some of its methodological diversity. Given Buzan’s commitmentto methodological pluralism, this assessment may seem incongruous, butin fact, Buzan makes no systematic attempt to explain what he means bymethodological pluralism or to evaluate the implications that follow fromadopting methodological pluralism. By contrast, Wendt, who also arguesin favour of methodological pluralism, makes it quite clear what he meansby the term.5 Buzan uses Wendt extensively when endeavouring to recastES theory and it might be inferred that Buzan subscribes to the view ofmethodological pluralism that Wendt promotes. But there are very differ-ent meanings attached to methodological pluralism in the literature, andWendt’s own view of methodological pluralism has recently undergone amajor shift.6 One aim of this chapter is to expose those different meaningsand to examine the implications of describing ES theory as methodologicallyplural.

The other key aim is to demonstrate that methodological pluralism isinherent in the ES’s theoretical approach and follows from the commitmentto a multidimensional theoretical framework as well as a multifaceted the-ory of history. As a result, ES theory generates, arguably, the most ambitiousand far-reaching research agenda that can be identified at this time in IR.Neorealism and neoliberalism are both characterised by essentially one-dimensional theoretical perspectives that are ahistorical in character. Indeed,the prevailing methodological orientation in IR is encouraging an increas-ingly fragmented approach to research, as the history of the realist researchprogramme over the past 30 years demonstrates.7 The ES, on the otherhand, has always been interested in developing an historically sensitive andcomprehensive/general theory of IR and this has necessitated an eclectic orpluralistic approach to methodology.

The argument makes five moves. The first examines how theorists outsideof the ES have promoted an image of the school that is overly circumscribedin terms of both its theory and its methodology. A second move exposes themultidimensional ES approach to theory, and is followed by a third movethat opens up its multifaceted theory of history. The fourth move drawsattention to two divergent conceptions of methodological pluralism, onethat aims at synthesising divergent methodological positions and anotherthat acknowledges the need to access divergent methodologies. A fifth movethen explores how methodological pluralism extends the range of methodsneeded to advance the ES research agenda.


80 History, Theory and Methodological Pluralism

Narrowing the ES research agenda

Suganami is undoubtedly correct when he suggests that the prevailing well-defined image of the ES is a relatively recent phenomenon.8 Nevertheless,there is no doubt that the ES now has global reach, and that even Americantheorists are willing to identify the ES, alongside neorealism and neoliber-alism, in terms of ‘the best-known approaches to international relations’.9

But this recognition comes at a price. So, for example, although Krasner hasa sophisticated understanding of some of the pluralistic dimensions of ESthinking, nevertheless, when it comes to locating theoretical approachesin his typology of theories that assesses the significance of internationalnorms and institutions, his nuanced, multidimensional view of ES theorygives way to a much more one-dimensional assessment (see Figure 4.1).10

What the typology reveals, from Krasner’s perspective, is that the ES presup-poses that international norms are highly institutionalised and very durablefeatures of any international society. By contrast, Krasner develops a theorythat attempts to explain why international norms have little impact on statebehaviour despite being highly durable. The problem with this typology,from an ES perspective, is that it makes no provision for either the poten-tial for norms, even deep-seated norms like the ones related to sovereignty,to evolve and transform. Nor does it allow for the interest that the schooldisplays in international settings where norms do not develop.

English school

NeoliberalismNeorealism

NORMDURABILITY

Higher

Lower

Lower NORM INSTITUTIONALISATION Higher

Krasner’s theory

Figure 4.1 Krasner’s typology of how competing theories assess the impact of normsin international relations11


Richard Little 81

Individualism

Holism

Materialism Idealism

English school

Neorealism

NeoliberalismClassical realism

Figure 4.2 Wendt’s typology of the methodological positioning of IR theories12

The failure to take account of the pluralistic character of the ES is alsoevident in the typology that Wendt establishes in his analysis of some ofthe methodological assumptions that underpin the major IR theories (seeFigure 4.2).13 In this context, Wendt associates methodology with the fun-damental philosophical assumptions on which any theoretical frameworkmust build. In this instance, he is examining the competing philosophicalassumptions that give rise to different social ontologies. From this perspec-tive, the ontological position of an IR theory can be located along twointersecting continuums. One continuum links idealism and materialismand charts a spectrum of responses about the relative importance that can beascribed to ideas as opposed to material forces. The other continuum linksholism and individualism and it charts a spectrum of responses that can beascribed to the relative importance that can be ascribed to structures andagents. What Figure 4.2 demonstrates, in the first instance, is that there isa degree of uncertainty about where two of the key IR theories should belocated. So Wendt acknowledges, for example, that whereas he himself isclear that neorealism operates at the individualist end of the continuum,others, for example Hollis and Smith, locate neorealism at the holistic orstructural end of the continuum.14 On the other hand, he has no problemwith locating the ES. It is unequivocally considered to privilege structuresand ideas.

The ES theoretical framework

The main elements of the ES framework were essentially in place from theearliest stages of the school’s development, although they were most clearly



articulated by Bull in the distinction he draws between the internationalsystem, the international society and the world society. He insisted, more-over, that international politics is constituted by a mix of the divergent andsometimes competing practices that take place in these three arenas andthat they collectively contribute to a complex and multidimensional reality.He also insisted that each arena had become associated with a tradition ofthought and that the thinking of theorists operating within each traditionhas evolved over the past 500 years and can be drawn upon, as a conse-quence, to help us to capture the essence of the changing reality of worldpolitics. Bull insists, therefore, that it is important not to ‘reify’ any of thesearenas and so, for example, ‘it is always erroneous to interpret events as ifinternational society were the sole or the dominant element’.15 Nevertheless,although some of the central features of ES theory revolve around the inter-action between these three arenas, there is no doubt that most attention hasbeen focused on the idea of an international society.

Buzan has made the most serious attempt so far to capture the multidi-mensional aspects of its theoretical framework, but he does so at the expenseof the ontological depth and diversity embraced by Bull.16 Two very differentkinds of moves are made by Buzan. First, he insists that there is a needto articulate much more fully what the ES means by world society and, asalready noted, he then argues that world society is constituted by both aninterhuman society and a transnational society. His second move has evenmore consequences for Bull’s framework because he questions the need todraw any distinction between the international system and the internationalsociety. However, Buzan is not the first theorist to make this move. James ini-tiated the attack on the distinction, insisting that it is simply not possible toconceive of an international system that does not embrace the features thatBull associates with the existence of an international society.17 By the sametoken, any meaningful conception of an international society must make thesystemic assumption that its members will take each other’s behaviour intoaccount. It follows, according to James, that Bull has set up a false dichotomyand the most practical step is to discard the idea of an international systembecause it is the societal dimension that needs attention.

Jackson, on the other hand, accepts that the two terms point up auseful distinction, but he argues that it is better captured by distin-guishing between instrumental and non-instrumental behaviour. Instrumentalbehaviour is based on strategic conceptions of self-interest that necessarilytake the actions of other actors into consideration.18 Failure to take accountof others will all too easily give rise to self-defeating strategies. By contrast,non-instrumental behaviour is based on legal and moral obligations thatnecessarily embrace the legitimate interests of others who will be affectedby this behaviour. Jackson accepts that both forms of behaviour need to beaccommodated in any analysis of international society. He objects to theuse of international system terminology, however, because it too easily gives


Richard Little 83

rise to a mechanistic view of behaviour that encourages what Jackson con-siders to be the utterly mistaken notion that human beings can be pushedaround by social structures. Moreover, he insists that when Bull refers tothe international system he is not suggesting that human behaviour can bestructurally determined.

Buzan provides a third significant discussion of the distinction.19 Heacknowledges Jackson’s view that Bull endeavours to capture two distinctivetypes of social behaviour, but he insists, nevertheless, that Bull’s positionon the international system does represent a ‘physical mode of interactiontypical of the mechanistic, realist-style analyses of the balance of power asan automatic process rooted in the relative material capabilities of states’.20

Despite this assessment, Buzan then argues, in line with Jackson, that Bull’sview of an international system can be captured perfectly well within thecontext of an international society, thereby rendering the need for a sys-tem/society divide redundant. What he does, in essence, is to establisha continuum of international societies, locating the international systemat one end of the continuum and re-designating it as a power politicalinternational society. At the other end of the continuum is a convergentinternational society where the component states all broadly share the samevalues. Between the two ends of the continuum (see Figure 4.3), Buzanestablishes two interim stages, one where the emergence of institutions per-mits coexistence and the other where institutions enable states to cooperate.Buzan also recognises, however, that the spectrum can be extended at eitherend, from an asocial world through to a confederative world, both operatingbeyond the limits of any society of states.

There is obviously a considerable utility in developing a continuum ofthis kind but it unquestionably moves away from the logic that Bull wasemploying and the multidimensional theoretical framework that he wantedto develop. From his perspective, to understand how an international soci-ety operates, it is necessary to examine the society in the context of boththe international system and the world society (see Figure 4.4) with theinternational society coming under pressure from two directions. Whereasan international society involves the ‘institutionalisation of shared inter-est and identity amongst states’, an international system focuses on ‘thestructure and process of international anarchy’ and a world society con-centrates on ‘global societal identities and arrangements’ of individuals and

Power political Coexistence Cooperative Convergence

I I I II I

Asocial Confederative

Figure 4.3 Buzan’s continuum of international societies21



Internationalsystem

Internationalsociety

Worldsociety

Figure 4.4 The ES theoretical framework—A levels of analysis perspective

non-state organisations.22 But there are three very distinctive features associ-ated with these three arenas. The first is that the arenas need to be examinedin conjunction with each other and they must be seen as separate levelsof analysis that help to capture the essential features of a more complexwhole (see Figure 4.4). In other words, although the international systemonly focuses on the material distribution of power, it presupposes the exis-tence of an international society that defines the existence of states in thefirst place. Neorealists have often been criticised for failing to acknowledgethis assumption, although it is now suggested that it is, in effect, built intoneorealist analysis.23 In any event, Bull’s conception of the internationalsystem bears an uncanny resemblance to the one formulated by Waltz,albeit developed in a much less systematic form. It is, therefore, not sur-prising to find Bull identifying Waltz’s Theory of International Politics as ‘animportant book’ that provides the ‘first, rigorously “systematic” account ofinternational politics’.24 On the other hand, international society is not onlylinked to the international system, but also to world society, and, indeed,a recurring theme in ES writing is the presumption that an international


Richard Little 85

Materialism Idealism

Internationalsystem

World society


Holism

Figure 4.5 The methodological positioning of key ES concepts using Wendt’stypology25

society needs to be underpinned by a world society that embraces a commonculture.

A second distinctive feature of the ES theoretical framework emerges whenthe framework is reassessed in terms of Wendt’s typology of the methodolog-ical positioning of IR theories (see Figure 4.5). It is unquestionably the casethat Bull views the international system, the international society and worldsociety from a holist or structural perspective, but whether he identifies theinternational system as well as the international society and world society inidealist rather than materialist terms is perhaps more difficult to assess sincethe issue is not directly addressed. Indeed, if Buzan argues that the failureto articulate the idea of world society in detail represents a weakness in ESliterature, the same could be said of the international system. Nevertheless,given Bull’s response to Waltz’s Theory of International Politics, there is a goodground for placing the international system at the materialist end of thecontinuum.

The third distinctive feature of the ES theoretical framework relates to itspotential to develop an explanatory typology. In contrast to Buzan’s frame-work, which only locates increasingly integrated international societiesalong a continuum, it is possible in principle to replicate this continuumbut build it into the ES framework. So, in the case of Buzan’s power politicalinternational society, it is possible to suggest that the impact of the interna-tional society and the world society is severely truncated and overpoweredby the impact of the international system (see Figure 4.6). By the same token,in the context of Buzan’s convergence international society, the situation isreversed with the impact of the international system being overwhelmed bythe impact of the international society and the world society (see Figure 4.7).Both of these figures, however, are only indicative and are designed to servethe heuristic purpose of revealing that the ES theoretical framework is poten-tially much more flexible and resilient than Buzan acknowledges. WhereasBuzan’s continuum is no more than a stipulative exercise, Figures 4.6 and 4.7can provide the basis for a series of research hypotheses and demonstratethat the research framework has the capacity to generate an expanding


86

Internationalsystem


Worldsociety

Figure 4.6 A power political international society—A levels of analysis perspective

Internationalsystem


Worldsociety

Figure 4.7 A convergence international society—A levels of analysis perspective


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research agenda. This feature of the research framework will be explored inmore depth in the section on ‘Methods and the history/theory link’.

The ES and the theory of history

Halliday argues that one of the key factors that distinguishes the ES andrenders it comparable with both liberalism and Marxism is a distinctive viewof history and of historical change.26 As with the theoretical framework,however, it is necessary to acknowledge that members of the ES have a mul-tifaceted view of history. First, there has been a persistent interest in worldhistory, as demonstrated in the work in the work of Wight and Watson.27

Both authors presuppose that the ES must break free of the Westphalianand Eurocentric straitjacket and come to terms with the very different formsthat states-systems have taken over the millennia. On the basis of his synop-tic overview of world history, Watson generated an intriguing pendulummetaphor (see Figure 4.8). He insists that it is only a metaphor and, asa consequence, does not constitute a fully developed theory of history.Nevertheless, it does make some important claims about the course of worldhistory. First he indicates that an international society defined by anar-chy and constituted by independent states is not the sole subject matterof international relations, but simply represents one end of a spectrum. Atthe other end of the spectrum lies empire where independent communi-ties are directly administered from an imperial centre. Between these twoextremes lie a range of intermediate positions and as the pendulum movesfrom the anarchic end of the spectrum, communities increasingly comeunder the control of a dominant power. Under hegemony, communities

Anarchy ofindependent

statesEmpireDominionHegemony

Figure 4.8 A theory of history: Watson’s metaphorical pendulum28



can no longer pursue independent foreign policies and, indeed, when thependulum reaches the point of dominion, the dominant power begins toregulate the internal policies of the communities. The second key point thatWatson makes is that there is no notion that history can be characterised asa predetermined and regular movement from anarchy to empire by way ofhegemony and dominion and then back again. The third and in many waysthe most important point made by Watson is that empire and anarchy rep-resent extreme positions and for most of world history, communities haveoperated between these two extremes. He postulates, moreover, that thereare systemic pressures that push the pendulum away from the extremes and,as a consequence, there is a significant tendency for the pendulum to moveto the lowest point in the pendulum’s swing. If Watson is correct, then it iscertainly the case that his assessment has not been taken on board by thevast majority of theorists in contemporary IR, although the orientation ofIR has slowly been changing over the past 30 years.29 What also needs to benoted is that Watson’s metaphor is effectively operating on the internationalsystem level of analysis.

The second facet of the ES approach to history focuses on modern historyand provides an account of the development of the European states-system.In contrast to Watson’s approach, it operates on all three levels of analysisarticulated by the ES. This view of history is developed most clearly in thevolume edited by Bull and Watson (1984). In essence, it is suggested thatthe history of the modern world can be depicted in terms of two waves.With the first wave, independent communities across the globe were linkedtogether by the Europeans in the form of an international system. Thenlater, the system was overtaken by the expansion of the European interna-tional society, with the norms and institutions that were established initiallyin Europe being extended across the globe. This development was a source ofconsiderable concern to Bull because of the importance that he attached tothe idea of world society.30 He was unclear whether a stable world order couldbe established in the absence of a world society that unequivocally extendedacross the globe. As will be made clear in the fifth move of the chapter, seri-ous reservations have been expressed about this facet of the ES and it is in theprocess of being substantially revised by another generation of ES theorists.But, before looking at how the research agenda of the ES has been modifiedand extended, it is necessary to explore the methodological implications thatflow from the conjunction of the multidimensional theoretical approach inconjunction with a multifaceted view of history as adopted by the ES.

Methodological pluralism and the ES

Theorists in the ES have traditionally not displayed very much interestin methodological questions, demonstrating ‘methodological quietism’


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according to Spegele.31 Nevertheless, as intimated above, they have essen-tially adopted a pluralistic approach to theory building and this requiresthem to operate on the basis of pluralistic methodological assumptions,whether this is acknowledged or not. Their interest in a pluralistic approachto international relations, moreover, has developed on two separate butinterrelated fronts. Not only has the ES promoted a theoretical frameworkthat presupposes the need to proceed on three separate although interactinglevels of analysis, but each of these levels also resonate with the distinc-tive approaches Wight identifies as realist, rationalist and revolutionist, withthe realists then being associated by Bull with the international system,rationalists with the international society and revolutionists with world soci-ety.32 Some contemporary political theorists, however, have been less thanimpressed with this attempt to establish a triptych of political theorists.Failing to recognise the link with the ES theoretical framework, Boucherargues, for example, that there is an inadequate attempt to explain eitherhow the categories that define each tradition of thought are related to eachother or how the theorists located within each category are identified. Asa consequence, the traditions are considered ‘little more than classificatorycategories into which thinkers are forced irrespective of the embarrassingelements which appear to be ill at ease in their putative homes’.33

Boucher, himself, endeavours to transcend this line of criticism by iden-tifying three styles of thinking that highlight particular sets of criteria thatare invoked to ‘guide, justify and recommend state action’.34 These stylesof thinking are seen to have generated three traditions of thought that arelinked in a dialectical relationship. A tradition of empirical realism focuseson the way that human desires inevitably give rise to conflicts of interestwhich need to be handled by rules of prudence and not moral imperatives.The second tradition allies justice with virtue and identifies the existenceof ethical principles that are universally applicable. The final tradition,identified by Boucher as historical reason, is seen to provide a possible syn-thesis to the other two antithetical ways of thinking. This third mode ofthinking recognises that morality is an historically emerging phenomenonand that what we observe today is a thick conception of particularistic moral-ity that is embedded in the day-to-day practices of all societies operatingalongside a very thin conception of universal morality that extends across atransnational global community of individuals.

Boucher associates this approach with an idea of methodological plural-ism premised on the assumption that these are not independent traditions ofthought.35 Rather, they co-exist, and there is an inevitable tension amongstthe competing ways of thinking about moral questions. As a consequence,the ideas linked to the three traditions of thought are seen to undergo con-siderable changes. Boucher contrasts his approach to the approach adoptedby members of the ES whose traditions are made up of ideas ‘that recurwith very little variation in different contexts, like coins that change hands,



and whose value is little affected by inflation’.36 Yet there are similaritiesbetween Boucher and the ES. Wight may be less explicit about this formof methodological pluralism, but without doubt he acknowledges that histhree traditions co-exist in ‘mutual tension and conflict’ with each other.Moreover, he also refutes the idea that the traditions form ‘railroad tracksrunning parallel to infinity’. Instead, he insists that although theorists tendto concentrate on one of the three political conditions at the expense of theothers, there are inevitable ‘cross-currents’ that pull the divergent streams ofideas together.37

Boucher’s idea of applying a dialectical approach to the task of classifyingpolitical theorists, moreover, was pre-empted by Ashley and then extendedby Linklater.38 Drawing on Ashley, Linklater pushes the idea of method-ological pluralism much further than Boucher because, as he sees it, real-ism, rationalism and revolutionism not only ‘disagree about the empiricalnature of world politics—they possess radically different conceptions of thenature of international relations theory and contrasting notions of the rightrelationship between theory and practice’.39 In line with this assessment,Linklater links realism to positivism because it analyses the ‘recurrent andrepetitive patterns of international relations’, rationalism to hermeneutics‘because it analyses the language and culture of diplomatic practice and theconventions which states obey as members of an international society’ andrevolutionism to critical theory because it stresses that ‘a series of interlockedcrises may bring about the transformation of the modern international sys-tem’. He then places the three methodologies into a dialectical relationshipwith each other, arguing that critical theory synthesises the antithesis thatexists between positivism and hermeneutics (see Figure 4.9).

Although Linklater and Boucher provide intriguing ways of relating thevery different traditions of international thought that developed across thehistory of the European states-system, even Linklater’s more complex res-olution does not effectively capture the twin track orientation of the ESfounders. On the one hand, the ES is interested in the contested and evolv-ing ways that European thinkers have endeavoured to theorise internationalrelations. At the same time, the ES is also interested in developing its owntheoretical framework which presupposes that an anarchic internationalsystem, a rule-governed international society and a transnational world soci-ety co-exist in the outside world and are not simply competing normativeassessments of world politics. Moreover, none of these elements are givenontological priority by the ES. It is assumed that they are operating withina single complex reality. The overarching methodological injunction whichunderlies this approach is that, as Bull puts it, the analyst must never ‘reify’any of these elements.40 Although attention may only be focused on oneof these elements, it must never be forgotten that this element is lodgedin the context of the other two. The point is reinforced by Watson, whoargues that the distinctions are useful not because they have the effect of


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EmpiricalrealismTHESIS

Universalmoral order

ANTITHESIS

Historicalreasoning

SYNTHESIS

RealismPositivismTHESIS

RationalismHermeneuticsANTITHESIS

RevolutionismCritical theorySYNTHESIS

Boucher’s MethodologicalPluralist Approach

Linklater’s MethodologicalPluralist Approach

Internationalsystem


Worldsociety

Levels of analysis Methodology

Positivism

Hermeneutics

Hermeneutics

Methodological pluralism andES levels of analysis

Realism

RationalismRevolutionism

Methodological pluralism andES traditions of thought

Evolution across time Evolution across time

Evolution across time

Figure 4.9 Divergent approaches relying on methodological pluralism

allowing the ‘complex reality of international relations to be simplified intothis category or that but because it allows that reality to be illuminated byconsidering it from a particular point of view’.41 Watson’s position is simplynot compatible with Linklater’s post-positive move which essentially con-flates normative and empirical approaches to theory building whereas, bycontrast, these approaches are effectively separated by the ES.

But what this divergence reveals, however, is that there is a degree oftension both within the ES levels of analysis theoretical framework andalso between the normative and empirical approaches to theory embeddedwithin the ES. These tensions, moreover, are exacerbated by the reference tomethodological pluralism. The tension can be addressed by the suggestionthat methodological pluralism itself can be approached from more than onedirection. This suggestion can be demonstrated, for example, by examining



Wendt’s work because he not only provides a discussion of methodologicalpluralism which is one of the most detailed and sophisticated in the litera-ture but one that was also, initially, at odds with the approach adopted bythe ES.42 Even more significantly, he has recently presented a new approachthat throws a very different light on methodological pluralism and, in doingso, potentially helps to clarify the tension in ES thinking about theory andmethodology.

Wendt’s starting point is that social scientists have no alternative butto make ontological and epistemological assumptions about the nature ofsocial reality and how they themselves are related to that reality. More-over, they must make these assumptions despite the fact that they involvedeeply contested philosophical issues. Wendt initially made the ontologi-cal assumption that it is through ideas that states ultimately relate to oneanother and it is ideas that essentially determine who and what states are.The same, of course, must also be true for the way that individuals relateacross state boundaries. But central to Wendt’s position is that the ideas areshared ideas drawing on a common culture, thereby reflecting the impor-tance of holist as well as idealist assumptions. In contrast to most theoristswho occupy this space, however, Wendt resists the obvious conclusion thatsocial scientists must, therefore, necessarily rely on a hermeneutic or inter-pretivist epistemology, where social inquiry can be compared to reading atext as opposed to the positivist epistemology that is employed by natu-ral scientists which rests on materialist ontological assumptions and whereinvestigation involves the observation of physical objects. From Wendt’sperspective, the importance attached to shared ideas will certainly meanthat social scientists have to adopt very different methods to those usedby natural scientists, but they do not require a distinctive epistemology. Inother words, natural and social scientists have a common understanding ofwhat they mean by knowledge. So what Wendt endeavours to show is thatan idealist ontology can be harnessed to a positivist epistemology. This iswhat Wendt means by methodological pluralism and he goes on to arguethat social scientists have become overly concerned about epistemologicalissues whereas he thinks that epistemology will take care of itself in ‘thehurly-burly of scientific debate’.43

This is a distinctive interpretation of methodological pluralism. WhereasBoucher and Linklater associate the term with a dialectical linking ofcompeting normative positions, Wendt associates it with a distinctive andunusual synthesis of an idealist ontology to a positivist epistemology.However, the ES generates yet another order of complexity for the idea ofmethodological pluralism. It presupposes a relationship between empiricaland normative thinking. This is alongside a presumption that an empiricalinvestigation of international relations requires us to operate on divergentlevels of analysis and that we need to approach these various levels using dif-ferent epistemological as well as ontological assumptions. The issue is further


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complicated by the fact that the ES also assumes that there are links betweenthese different levels of analysis, thereby raising the question of whetherontological as well as epistemological questions can also get sorted out inthe ‘hurly-burly of scientific debate’.

Given the controversial nature of his position, Wendt has inevitably comein for criticism from a wide range of perspectives.44 In responding to hiscritics, however, Wendt has argued that if his initial premises are accepted,then there is very little need for him to give much ground to his criticsbecause they all broadly subscribe to a classical model of science which,in turn, rests on the Cartesian dualist position that draws a categorical dis-tinction between mind and matter. The distinction rests, Wendt argues onfour assumptions.45 First, there is a subject–object distinction with the ana-lyst (subject) investigating an external reality (object). Second, the scientificmethod is needed to acquire knowledge of the outside world. Third, to makeprogress in science it is essential to maintain a distinction between factsand values. Fourth, it is assumed that matter is purely physical and mustbe distinguished from the mind or consciousness which is not a materialphenomenon and operates on the basis of laws that are different from thelaws that govern the physical world.

Although these four assumptions, according to Wendt, are broadlyaccepted by both positivists and interpretivists, the dualist ontology onwhich they rest is almost certainly incorrect and generates an erroneousview of consciousness (although Wendt also argues that there is no secureground at the moment on which to try to build a ‘more correct’ under-standing of consciousness). Moreover, natural scientists no longer accept thematerialist view of matter on which classical physics, as well as Cartesiandualism, depends. This is demonstrated in quantum physics, despite thefact that quantum physicists are unable to agree on what their theory istelling us about the nature of reality. But in essence, sub-atomic phenom-ena can be described in two irreducible and non-equivalent ways—as eitherwaves or particles and, as a consequence it is not possible, in principle, toknow both the position and momentum of a particle at the same time.It follows that the idea of unitary and integrated knowledge is inherentlyimpossible, because we necessarily require conflicting narratives to describesub-atomic phenomena. Moreover, in providing these narratives, it also hasto be accepted that the subject–object distinction breaks down. Quantumphysicists, therefore, have opened up a Pandora’s Box to reveal, among otherthings, a post-modern world of alternative realities where the conception ofcausality breaks down.

Wendt insists that social scientists cannot ignore what is happening inthe physical sciences because the social world operates within the physicalworld and he argues that although the material world cannot determinewhat happens in the social world, it certainly constrains what can andcannot be done.46 Moreover, as a ‘metaphysical constraint’, the material



world unequivocally ‘plays a fundamental role in our work’. In the past,Wendt argues, like most social scientists, that he has taken the assumptionsunderpinning classical physics for granted. However, having examined theno-doubt heroic assumption of brain theorists that a quantum explanationfor human consciousness is possible, he believes that there is now a need toexplore the implications of this assumption for the social sciences becauseit has such very significant consequences for social theory. It is not possi-ble here to follow the details of Wendt’s argument, which in any event onlyprovide a sketch of the book-length argument that he is developing, butthe conclusion of his argument is important. In essence, it has led him toshift his position on methodological pluralism and to reject the attempt toachieve a synthesis of positivism and interpretivism. Instead, he argues thatquantum naturalism reaffirms the position that explanations sought by pos-itivists and the understanding pursued by interpretivists are both necessaryand complementary ways of viewing the social world.

This is a conclusion that might not come as much of a surprise to theES. The founders were, in essence, intuitive or perhaps even unintentionalmethodological pluralists. The complexity and diversity of the ontologicaland epistemological assumptions that underpin the ES approach to theoryand history have come about, to some extent, as a consequence of notpaying close attention to ontological and epistemological questions. Thesame line of argument can also be applied to many working historians and,certainly, the impact of historians has been very important for the ES orien-tation.47 Historians almost invariably acknowledge that there are always atleast two stories to tell, one from the inside and the other from the outside.They know that they operate from a potentially privileged position becausethey can endeavour to recover the viewpoint of the historical actors, butthey also have the luxury of knowing what happened after the event. So,self-fulfilling prophecies and unanticipated consequences, for example, canbecome crucial elements of any historical narrative. Indeed, historians nec-essarily have to make sense of events in the light of subsequent events. Whatis distinctive about the ES is not simply the focus on structural constraints,but also the recognition that the impact of structural constraints have to beexamined in the light of both the separation and the interaction betweenfacts and values, the relationship between the story told from the outsideand the inside, the fact that actors have a conception of both the past andthe future, and the link between actors and analysts. These complexitiesmap quite closely onto Wendt’s quantum perspective on methodologicalpluralism.

Few, if any, ES theorists, however, are likely to engage with Wendt’s quan-tum move. They are much more likely to be sympathetic with the view thatepistemological and ontological problems will be resolved in the hurly-burlyof doing research. It is necessary to conclude, therefore, by exploring themethods needed to advance the ES research agenda.


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Methods and the history/theory link

The ES’s theoretical framework embraces world history as well as being globalin geographical scope (see Figure 4.10). From the ES perspective, for muchof world history, international relations must be discussed in terms of states-systems that are regional in extent. The framework presupposes that theseregionally based states-systems then need to be investigated on three levelsof analysis. However, for the ES, the emergence of the European states-systemis particularly important because it has generated an enduring global states-system. Perhaps inevitably, therefore, this system provides the main focusof attention for the ES. Although the majority of research carried out underthe ES umbrella concentrates on the modern period, it is also argued thatthe world history framework needs to be amended and extended. Buzan andLittle argue, for example, that the timeframe must also embrace the systemsthat preceded the emergence of states because there were extensive ‘inter-national’ networks in existence before the formation of states.48 Moreover,many of these networks persisted into modern times and, as a consequence,it is not possible to comprehend large chunks of world history without tak-ing these networks into account. At the other end of the temporal spectrum,Buzan and Gonzalez-Palaez argue that despite the establishment of a globalstates-system it is important to recognise that regional states-systems persistand maintain their identities.49 At the same time, the ES levels of analysishave also come under close scrutiny, particularly by Buzan, who argues, asdiscussed earlier, that the international system level should be absorbed intothe international society level.50 This position, however, is still contested.51

On the other hand, Buzan stands on much more consensual ground when heargues that the theoretical framework needs to take account of internationaleconomics. It is also the case that once economics are taken into account

WORLD HISTORY

EMERGENCE OF A GLOBALSTATES SYSTEM

Regional statessystems

International systems

International societies

World societies

International system

International society

World society

Figure 4.10 The historical and geographical scope of the ES framework



a major boundary problem arises since, from a world historical perspective,it is evident that the boundary of an international economic system oftenextends beyond the boundary of the related international political system.52

There are no signs that these attempts to modify the ES theoretical frame-work are going to halt in the near future or be finally resolved. A furtherand significant example is Keene’s challenge to the framework used by Bulland Watson to trace the history of international relations over the last twocenturies.53 As they depict this period, the Europeans initially entered intosystemic relations with outside world and then the European internationalsociety extended beyond Europe and moved across the global internationalsystem. As critics have argued, this assessment effectively ignores the ongo-ing process of colonialism.54 As Keene sees it, the Europeans used the ideaof a standard of civilisation to justify the application of a very differentset of rules outside of Europe to the one that operated within Europe.Inside Europe the rules promoted co-existence and a toleration of diver-sity. By contrast, outside of Europe there were a set of rules that permittedintervention in order to promote ‘civilization’. Far from a rule-governedinternational society extending into an anomic international system, theEuropeans established a hierarchical international order, with different rulesoperating in the two domains (see Figure 4.11).

There is no doubt that the clarification and modification of the ES researchframework is an important and ongoing activity. However, progress alsorequires detailed empirical research and given the methodological pluralism

Europeaninternational

order

Non-Europeaninternational

order

Europeaninternational

society

Global international system

Keene’s view

Bull and Watson’s view

Figure 4.11 Two contrasting ES views of the nineteenth century international arena


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TIME PERIOD 1

States System Ae.g. Sumerian

city states

TIME PERIOD 2

States System Be.g. Greek city

statese.g. Italian city

states

TIME PERIOD 3

States System C

Figure 4.12 ES comparative historical case studies

associated with the research framework, inevitably this will involve the useof an imaginative range of research methods.

In the first instance, the founding fathers of the ES hoped to make progressby engaging in a systematic comparison of international societies from thepast (see Figure 4.12). Wight acknowledged the importance of the compar-ative method and Watson examined ten international societies from theancient world.55 Ironically, the most important general insight to emergefrom the examination, however, relates not to the nature of rules and insti-tutions but to the distribution of power and the suggestion that hegemonyrather than polarity represents the norm in international politics—an assess-ment that perhaps resonates increasingly in the aftermath of the Cold War.But, in any event, while the importance of systematic comparative researchis certainly acknowledged much more needs to be done on this front.56

Watson recognised that he was only making a first step in establishinga comparative study of international societies. There will always be limits,however, to how far this exercise can be taken because of the paucity ofinformation available about many aspects of the international societies thatdeveloped in the ancient world. Nevertheless, new information is alwayscoming on stream and, in truth, the ES is only beginning to mine what isalready available.57 But obviously much richer sources of information existwhen it comes to the analysis of the modern international arena. Here, how-ever, the ES has hardly scratched the surface. The work of theorists fromBull to Buzan, moreover, has concentrated primarily on establishing a broadframework. But, as already noted, essential elements of the frameworks arein conflict and have also been challenged by other theorists. These ongoingtensions within the ES, however, can only be resolved or transcended by aconstant interaction between theorists and empirical researchers.

There are inevitably problems of method associated with the task ofengaging in empirical research. Gong, for example, considers that it isaxiomatically true that an international system precedes the establishmentof an international society and he focuses on how the idea of a stan-dard of civilisation evolved and played into the expansion of the Europeaninternational society.58 But on what basis can we identify the expandingmembership of the European international society? Gong argues that thereare two key sources: first, the treaties that the European states signed withnon-European countries and, second, the international legal texts written



by leading international lawyers of the time that distinguished betweencivilised and uncivilised states.59

Keene, however, challenges the premises that Gong operates from, andis much more favourably disposed to the earlier work of Alexandrowicz,who argued that prior to the nineteenth century many states around theworld were acknowledged as fully-fledged states by the Europeans, only tohave this status removed once the standard of civilisation had been elabo-rated.60 What happened, according to Alexandrowicz, was that there was ashift from natural law to positivist international law and in the process thescope of international law shrank. In fact, it is clear that both Gong andAlexandrowicz are operating on a hermeneutic basis and they show veryeffectively that the inside story changed across time. It is then necessaryto tell the story from the outside as well as from the inside. There is nodoubt in my mind that Keene’s outside story is more convincing than theone that Bull and Watson provide. Moreover, it also opens the way to a verymuch darker account of what the expansion of the European internationalsociety involved, not only in terms of European colonization, but also interms of the way that new members like Japan were able to justify their ownexpansion.61

Although there is no doubt that treaties and legal texts are importantroutes to the inside story, for the ES to progress, it is also essential to enterthe diplomatic archives, particularly when it comes to assessing whetherdecision makers are being influenced by systemic changes in the interna-tional distribution of power or by the intersubjective norms that help todefine and maintain international society. Entering the archives, however,is a time-consuming activity and it becomes important to focus on criticalcase studies which provide important test cases. For example, the AmericanCivil War has been identified as the last occasion when the Europeans hadthe potential opportunity to affect the distribution of power in the NorthAmerican continent. How far were the European actors aware that the bal-ance of power was moving decisively against them and why did they failto go to the aid of the Confederates in an attempt to divide the conti-nent? The issue is critical, in particular, for offensive realists whose theorypredicts that a hegemonic power like Britain would intervene to preventthe consolidation of the United States as a regional hegemon. Mearsheimerargues that a crucial reason that the British did not go down this route wasbecause they believed that the Confederates could not defeat the North.62

What the archives reveal, however, is that while the key British decisionmakers believed during the initial stages of the war that the South wouldbe successful, they were also very conscious of and responsive to the pre-vailing norms concerning neutrality and intervention. Indeed, Britain paidsubstantial compensation to the United States after the war for an allegedbreach of the neutrality laws.63 Nevertheless, contrary to the conventionalimage, the ES is, in fact, just as interested in the conditions when systemic


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rather than societal forces begin to influence the behaviour of states. In bothcases, however, access to the archives is crucial to get a handle on the insidestory.

A focus on the archives not only opens a window on the relative impact ofthe international system as opposed to international society, it can also bringthe world society into play. In the case of the American Civil War, for exam-ple, the British had been contemplating an offer to mediate between the twosides. It becomes very clear from documentary sources, however, that as soonas Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, Palmerston, the BritishPrime Minister, insisted that mediation was now out of the question becauseit would be impossible to devise a resolution that the South would agreeto and which the British public would find acceptable.64 As a consequence,while the British government was favourably disposed to the possibility ofthe United States dividing, they were not only constrained from becominginvolved because of established legal norms but also because of pressurefrom world society. Although Buzan is no doubt correct to argue that theES founding fathers failed to theorise world society adequately, it is alsothe case that in addition to conceptual clarification it is necessary to iden-tify methods that will allow us to study world society. Clark has started tomake moves in this direction and is convinced that to understand why somekey international norms have come into play it is necessary to study moreclosely the relationship between world society and international society andhe takes the abolition of the slave trade as one of his case studies because itreveals ‘a network of transnational actors seeking consciously to shape thepolicy of international society’.65 From this perspective, to assess the effec-tiveness of the network, however, it is essential to identify a method that canreveal their impact on the key actors in international society. Unquestion-ably working in the archives represents a necessary if not a sufficient wayforward.

Conclusion

The aim of this chapter has been to indicate first that the ES has a much moreexpansive research framework than is often recognised and it follows thatthe framework gives rise to a very ambitious research agenda. The frameworkis expansive because it operates on a number of very different fronts. On thetemporal front, it embraces a world historical timeframe, while on the geo-graphical front it explores the movement from regional systems through tothe establishment of a global system. Across these time and space dimen-sions, the ES also operates on three distinct ontological levels of analysis.Although the ES does effectively privilege the international society level ofanalysis, this is in part because it was felt by the founding fathers that thesociological dimension of international relations had been underplayed andpartly because the international society was identified as an intermediate



level that came under pressure from both the international system andworld society. In any event, the need to operate on all three levels is nowincreasingly acknowledged.

As the attempt is made to open up the three levels both theoretically andempirically, however, it becomes increasingly apparent that the methodolog-ical orientation of the ES, like its research framework, is also much morecomplex than is generally recognised. It is argued in this chapter that itis not inappropriate to identify members of the ES as intuitive method-ological pluralists. Although methodological pluralism has been cast in anumber of different ways, it is argued here that it presupposes the need fortheorists and empirical researchers to operate on the basis of a range of diver-gent ontological and epistemological assumptions. It is also suggested, albeittentatively, that some of the more surprising implications of the ES approachto methodology have started to be teased out in Alexander Wendt’s mostrecent work.

Finally, it is argued that for the ES to make further progress, it is essentialto carry out empirical research in conjunction with attempting to develop atheoretical understanding of international action. These two activities needto go hand in hand, with theory helping to guide where empirical researchneeds to take place and empirical research revealing where there are prob-lems for and lacunae in the theory. This task is further complicated, however,by the methodological pluralism associated with the theoretical frameworkwhich presupposes the need for an inside and an outside story on all threelevels of analysis. Attention is focused in this chapter on how the diplo-matic archives, in particular, provide a way to open up the internationalsociety from the inside and at the same time reveal a way of linking theinternational society to the international system and to world society.

There is no doubt that this chapter raises more questions than it answers.But although it is clearly much less problematic simply to see the ES asproviding an idealist take on the international society, such an assessmentdenudes the school of the depth and complexity that the founding fathersascribed to it. By embracing a world historical perspective, operating onthree levels of analysis, and acknowledging the indispensability of a norma-tive dimension, the ES establishes a theoretical framework with the potentialto provide a holistic general theory of international relations.


1. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society: English School Theory and the SocialStructure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 12.

2. Buzan associates the first theoretical perspective primarily with the work ofManning, see, for example, C. A.W Manning, The Nature of International Society(London: LSE/Macmillan, 1976); the second with the normative dimension ofwork by Bull and Wight, see, for example, Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Soci-ety: A Study of Order in World Politics, 3rd edn (London: Macmillan, 2002); and


Richard Little 101

Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions, ed. Brian Porter andGabriele Wight (Leicester: Leicester University Press/ Royal Institute of Inter-national Affairs, 1991); and the third with Bull and Buzan’s own work, see,for example, Bull, The Anarchical Society and Barry Buzan, and Richard LittleInternational Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

3. Buzan, From International to World Society, p. 14.4. Ibid., p. 15.5. See Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999).6. See Alexander Wendt, ‘Social Theory as Cartesian science: An auto-critique from a

quantum perspective’ in Stefano Guzzini and Anna Leander, eds., Constructivismand International Relations: Alexander Wendt and his Critics (London: Routledge,2006).

7. In the first instance, a parsimonious neorealism overtook the much more expan-sive and historically sensitive approach promoted by classical realism. But neo-realism then subsequently splintered into diverse and more focused theoreticalperspectives. Neorealism, for example, has divided into offensive and defen-sive realism, both of which have been challenged by neoclassical realism. Fora discussion of this development, see, for example, Stephen G. Brooks, ‘Duel-ing Realisms (Realism in International Relations)’, International Organization 51(1997), pp. 445–477.

8. See Hidemi Suganami, ‘British Institutuionalists, or the English School TwentyYears On’, International Relations 17 (2003), pp. 253–271.

9. See Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1999), p. 44.

10. Krasner, Sovereignty, pp. 47–48.11. Adapted from Krasner, Sovereignty, p. 58.12. Adapted from Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 32.13. See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.14. See Hollis, Martin and Steve Smith, Explaining and Understanding International

Realtions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).15. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 49.16. See Buzan, From International to World Society.17. See Alan James, ‘System or Society’, Review of International Studies 19 (1993),

pp. 269–288.18. See Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States,

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 113–116.19. Buzan, From International to World Society, pp. 98–108.20. Ibid., p. 99.21. Based on the discussion in Buzan, From International to World Society, pp. 159–160.22. Ibid., p. 7.23. See Stacie E. Goddard and Daniel H. Nexon, ‘Paradigm Lost? Reassessing The-

ory of International Politics’, European Journal of International Relations 11 (2005),pp. 9–61.

24. Cited in Andrew Hurrell, ‘Society and Anarchy in the 1990s’ in B. A. Roberson ed.,International Society and the Development of International Relations Theory (London:Pinter, 1998), p. 20.

25. Adapted from Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 32.



26. See Fred Halliday, ‘The Middle East and Conceptions of “International Soci-ety”’, in Barry Buzan and Ana Gonzalez-Palaez eds., The Middle East ThroughEnglish School Theory: A Regional International Society, Workshop, London, 12–13July, 2007.

27. See Martin Wight, Systems of States, edited and introduced by Hedley Bull(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977) and Adam Watson, The Evolution ofInternational Society: A Comparative Historical Analysis (London: Routledge, 1992).

28. Based on Watson, Evolution of International Society, pp. 14–16 and 122–125.29. See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-

versity Press, 1981); Barry Buzan and Richard Little International Systems in WorldHistory: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2000); and Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William C. Wohlforth,‘Conclusion’, in Stuart J. Kaufman, Richard Little and William C. Wohlforth eds.,The Balance of Power in World History (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

30. See Bull, The Anarchical Society.31. Roger D Spegele, ‘Traditional Political Realism and the Writing of History’, in Alex

J. Bellamy ed., International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press,2005), p. 97.

32. Martin Wight, ‘An Anatomy of International Thought’ Review of InternationalStudies 13 (1987), pp. 221–227; and Bull, The Anarchical Society.

33. David Boucher, Political Theories of International Relations: From Thucydides to thePresent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 16.

34. Ibid., p. 23.35. See Ibid., p. 40; the approach drawing on David Boucher, Texts in Context: Revi-

sionist Methods for Studying the History of Ideas (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff,1985).

36. Ibid., p. 17.37. Wight, ‘An Anatomy of International Thought’.38. See R. K. Ashley, ‘Political Realism and Human Interests’, International Stud-

ies Quarterly 25 (1981), pp. 204–236 and Andrew Linklater, Beyond Realism andMarxism: Critical Theory and International Realations (Houndmills: Macmillan PressLtd, 1990).

39. Linklater, Beyond Realism and Marxism, p. 10.40. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 49.41. See Adam Watson, ‘Hedley Bull, States Systems and International Societies’, Review

of International Societies 13(1987), pp. 147–153.42. See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, and Wendt, ‘Social Theory as

Cartesian science’.43. Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, p. 373.44. See, for example, Guzzini and Leander, Constructivism and International Relations.45. Wendt, ‘Social Theory as Cartesian science’, p. 188.46. Ibid., p. 218.47. See Spegele, ‘Traditional Political Realism’.48. See Part 2 of Buzan and Little, International Systems in World History.49. Buzan and Gonzalez-Palaez, The Middle East through English School Theory.50. Buzan, From International to World Society.51. See Tim Dunne, ‘System, State and Society: How Does it All Hang Together?’,

Millennium 34 (2005), pp. 157–170 and Richard Little, The Balance of Power inInternational Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

52. See Buzan and Little, International Systems in World History.


Richard Little 103

53. See Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Orderin World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), who challengesHedley Bull and Adam Watson, eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1984).

54. See W. Callahan, ‘Nationalizing International Theory: Race, Class and the EnglishSchool’, Global Society 18 (2004), pp. 305–323.

55. Wight, System of States and Watson Evolution of International Society.56. For an insightful example of what comparative historical analysis can achieve,

see Christian Reus-Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity andInstitutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1999).

57. For an illustration of what can be achieved, although in most instances not work-ing from an ES perspective, see the case studies in Kaufman, Little and Wohlforth,The Balance of Power in World History.

58. Gerrit, W. Gong, The Standard of Civilization in International Society (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1984).

59. Ibid., p. 25.60. See Keene, Beyond Anarchical Society, pp. 26–28 and Charles Alexandrowicz, An

Introduction to the History of the Law of Nations in the East Indies (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1967).

61. See Shogo Suzuki, ‘Japan’s Socialisation into Janus-Faced European InternationalSociety’, European Journal of International Relations 11 (2005), pp. 137–164.

62. John J.Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W.Nortonand Co., 2001), p. 489.

63. See Richard Little, ‘British Neutrality versus Offshore Balancing in the AmericanCivil War: The English School Strikes Back’ Security Studies 16 (2007), pp. 68–95and Peter Thompson, ‘The Case of the Missing Hegemon: British Noninterventionin the American Civil War’ Security Studies 16 (2007), pp. 96–132.

64. Little, ‘British Neutrality versus Offshore Balancing’, p. 89.65. Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2007), p. 47.


5International Society as an Ideal TypeEdward Keene

The English School’s contribution to the study of international relationsis often seen as a set of descriptively rich concepts that may be employedwithin a variety of theoretical approaches.1 Nevertheless, few scholars thinkthat this conceptual vocabulary is adequate. Some take the extreme viewthat the problems with it are so serious that we should use a different setof concepts, such as ‘global society’ or ‘global civil society’, to replace famil-iar English School ideas such as ‘international society’.2 But that is a verysweeping judgment and one that threatens to overlook the value of, amongothers, the historical insights of the English School. A much more commonapproach is to begin with the conceptual apparatus provided by the school,expanding or redefining some of its central terms. This has been done froma variety of social theoretical perspectives.3 A prominent recent example isAlexander Wendt’s refashioning of Martin Wight’s ‘three traditions’ of ‘inter-national theory’ into an account of three different kinds of ‘internationalsocial structure’, depending on whether the predominant form of interac-tion involves enmity (Hobbesian), rivalry (Lockean) or friendship (Kantian).4

More recently still, Barry Buzan has tried to build the English School’s tri-partite distinction between international system, international society andworld society into a more robust taxonomy, embracing, for example, a dis-tinction between global and regional international societies, and firming upthe school’s rather ambiguous idea of world society, in order to create aframework that will allow us to monitor structural changes in internationalrelations particularly with a view to charting processes of globalization.5

My goal in this chapter is not to assess these various ways of developingthe English School’s concepts, each of which may well have merit on itsown terms. Rather it is to explore the resources that the school offers foran interpretive sociology of international relations and to ask how we mightwant to reconstruct some of their core concepts in order to develop suchan approach. This appears to be an especially appropriate line of enquirybecause the English School’s methodological orientation, although notori-ously difficult to pin down, has often been seen as an approximation to

104


Edward Keene 105

verstehen, and their concepts have frequently been described as ‘ideal types’in a broadly Weberian sense.6 But there have been very limited attemptsto develop a systematic analysis of how Max Weber’s methodological ideasmight be employed in our field.7 My intention is therefore first to explainwhat a Weberian ‘ideal type’ is (since it is emphatically not just any kind ofconceptual abstraction) and how concepts so constructed should be used tointerpret the meaning and significance of social phenomena.

This effort should not be understood in any purely descriptive sense, as, forexample, Buzan’s classification of international system, international soci-ety and world society as different forms of international interaction. As willbecome clear from the discussion of Weber’s method, in order to employthese essentially descriptive terms, they need to be related to values, andthe pivotal English School concept in this respect is the idea of order andalso, although to a less developed extent, justice.8 The school always sawthe establishment of order in world politics as involving the realisation ofcertain values, and it was this that allowed them to make judgments aboutthe cultural significance of international phenomena, such as the existence(or decline) of a society of states. That, in a nutshell, is what gives much ofthe English School’s work its character as a distinctive interpretation of inter-national relations, rather than a general theory of how international actorsbehave, or simply a narrative history of what they have done in the past.Once the general methodological principles involved in this approach tointerpretive sociology have been identified, we can then use them to assessand build upon the work of the English School.

The second half of the chapter is therefore primarily concerned with threequestions. How did the English School define the concept of order in worldpolitics? How did they interpret actual international phenomena, especiallythe existence of an ‘international society’, in relationship to its core values?And, how does their approach compare with Weber’s methodological prin-ciples for interpretive sociology? In it, I will contrast the very well-knowndefinition of international order given by Hedley Bull in The Anarchical Soci-ety with that which appears in Martin Wight’s essay on ‘Western Values inInternational Relations’.9 I will then suggest some alternative ways in whichorder may also be understood.

Weber’s method for interpretive sociology

According to Weber, ‘knowledge of the cultural significance of concretehistorical events and patterns is exclusively and solely the final end which,among other means, concept-construction and the criticism of constructsalso seek to serve’.10 This succinct formulation, which lays bare the inter-pretive ambitions of his enquiry, captures two of the essential method-ological principles that inform his approach. First, at least within the fieldof the social sciences, we are always ultimately concerned with ‘cultural


106 International Society as an Ideal Type

significance’. The researcher must engage in an act of evaluative interpre-tation in order ‘to relate the events of the real world consciously or uncon-sciously to universal “cultural values” and to select out those relationshipswhich are significant for us’.11

Secondly, although ideal types are in themselves abstractions, they arenonetheless attempts to understand the significance of ‘concrete historicalevents and patterns’, in terms of their causes and consequences, the kindsof social action and actors that they involve, and their meaning as productsof a particular social and cultural environment. One of the uses of an idealtype is as a tool with which to develop a better historical interpretation ofwhat happens in the world by ‘constructing relationships which our imag-ination accepts as plausibly motivated and hence as “objectively possible”and which appear as adequate from the nomological standpoint’.12 Despitethe frequent contrast between ‘understanding’ and explanation, Weber’s useof verstehen aimed at an adequate form of causal explanation.

Since the focus here is on ‘plausibly motivated’ forms of social action,Weber’s substantive historical interpretations often identified axiologicalaffinities between social forms, ‘structures’ in contemporary terminology,and ideas in order to deepen our understanding of the motives that shapeour own way of life: the link between modern capitalist economic conductand the ascetic Protestant idea of the calling being the most famous exam-ple. To explain his method, then, I will focus on these key terms: culturalsignificance, value relevance, adequate causation and axiological affinity.13

Evaluative interpretation: cultural significance and value relevance

The first step in the formation of an ideal type is to relate events to val-ues. In keeping with neo-Kantian epistemology, this position rejects thebelief that one can develop concepts merely with reference to the facts:conceptual constructs are, for Weber, always products of how we selectivelyevaluate phenomena. They are not contained in the phenomena themselves,awaiting only discovery. Since the world is an impossibly complex mass ofevents, unintelligible in itself, the critical question is how to identify whichbits of it are worth knowing, and to be able to make such a judgment wemust approach an enquiry from a more or less conscious ‘point of view’.It is the ‘transcendental presupposition of every cultural science’ that we areable ‘to take a deliberate attitude towards the world and to lend it signifi-cance’. This is how we should understand Weber’s famous description of theideal type as constructed through ‘the one-sided accentuation of one or morepoints of view and by the synthesis of a great many diffuse, discrete, more orless present and occasionally absent concrete individual phenomena, whichare arranged according to those one-sidedly emphasized viewpoints into aunified analytical construct’.14 The focus on sovereignty in the constructionof an ideal-type state system would be an example.


Edward Keene 107

Before going any further, we should note that this position implies certainlimitations on the kind of ‘analytical construct’ that an ideal type is, andthe purposes for which it should be used. As ideal types are based on thedeliberately one-sided accentuation of particular points of view, they are notattempts to approximate reality, still less to capture it in its entirety. An idealtype is an attempt to capture the significance of an aspect of reality for us.An ideal type is therefore not particularly suitable for use as ‘a schema underwhich a real situation or action is to be subsumed as one instance’; on thecontrary, it is a ‘limiting concept with which the real situation or action iscompared and surveyed for the explication of certain of its significant compo-nents’. Moreover, in constructing an ideal type one is always trying to makeexplicit ‘the unique individual character of cultural phenomena’, rather thantheir ‘class or average character’.15 If we were trying to classify groups ofevents according to whether or not they share certain traits, we should usewhat Weber calls a ‘class concept’ (Gattungsbegriff ); whereas the ideal typecomes into its own when we want to ‘conceptualize complicated historicalpatterns with respect to those components in which their specific cultural sig-nificance is contained’.16 To repeat, the crucial point is that ideal types do nottell us something about reality as such; their purpose is to tell us somethingabout the significance for us of a segment of reality.

All of which is simply to say that any ideal type is, in effect, an interpre-tation of the social world in terms of a particular set of cultural values, andthe purpose of Weber’s extended methodological reflections on ideal-typeformation is above all to determine systematic procedures through whichsuch an exercise should properly proceed. One of his main points here isthat, although an ideal type is always constructed from a particular point ofview, it does not only contain phenomena of which its author personallyapproves: mere ‘feelings’ or ‘preferences’ are not a proper basis for con-cept formation. The attribution of cultural significance is not based on a‘value-judgment’ in this sense, but rather on a judgment of the relevance ofa phenomenon to the values that are embedded in a culture. Prostitution,Weber remarked, could be as valid a subject for an interpretive sociologicalenquiry as law or economics, although it is worth noting that in his ownwork he preferred to focus on the latter two. Concept formation properlyunderstood only takes place when we pass beyond ‘the actual evaluationof an object into the stage of theoretical-interpretative reflection on possi-ble relevance to values’. The point is not to select only what one sees assignificant or, still less, worthwhile in a particular set of phenomena, butto ‘elaborate in an explicit form the focal points for possible “evaluative”attitudes which the segment of reality in question discloses and in conse-quence of which it claims a more or less universal “meaning”’.17 In effect,then, the construction of an ideal type should make transparent, system-atic and as general as possible the evaluative interpretation of a phenomenain terms of its relevance to a range of viewpoints that give it significance



for the wider audience to whom the enquiry is addressed. Whether or notthat has been done successfully must be measured in terms of the degreeto which the interpretation commands the interest of that audience, inthe sense that it does indeed reveal something of significance about theirlives.

However, we should not ignore the aside through which Weber qualifieshis apparent claim to universal significance: ‘as we like to think’. Ourenquiries are necessarily based upon our cultural interests, but these arenot ‘objectively’ valid general cultural values in a Rickertian sense. On thecontrary, Weber said, ‘all evaluative ideas are “subjective”. . . . And they are,naturally, historically variable in accordance with the character of the cul-ture and the ideas which rule men’s minds.’ (An example would be thechanging value we place on sovereignty.) Indeed, having said that the pointof evaluative interpretation is to identify focal points for possible attitudestowards a particular phenomenon, Weber acknowledged that ‘the inex-haustibility of its “content” as regards possible focal points for our interestis what is characteristic of the historical individual of the “highest” order’.18

We will never, in other words, be able to provide a truly comprehensiveevaluative interpretation of the meaning of historical individuals, such asthe state, on the basis of universally valid ‘general cultural values’ in theway that Rickert’s proposal for ‘objectivity’ would require. Weber saw littlevalue in pursuing this will o’ the wisp, warning against ‘the continual chasefor new viewpoints and new analytical constructs’ in a misguided quest forexhaustive knowledge of the significance of reality.19

Among other things, this suggests that there might well be more than oneideal type of a particular ‘historical individual’, depending on the variousviewpoints from which the meaning of that cluster of phenomena could beunderstood. For example, Weber noted that his contemporaries had comeup with several different ideal types of capitalistic culture, and he acceptedthat ‘Each of these can claim to be a representation of the “idea” of capitalis-tic culture to the extent that it has really taken certain traits, meaningfulin their essential features, from the empirical reality of our culture andbrought them together into a unified ideal-construct.’ He therefore admittedthe heuristic value of, for example, both neoclassical economic and Marxistconceptions of contemporary capitalism in terms of certain of its key fea-tures (the efficiency of the market, on the one hand and exploitation andalienation, on the other) as statements of what made that form of economicconduct meaningful. What he objected to was the inflated claim that eitherof these ideal types revealed some deeper, metaphysical truth about humanexistence.20 In addition, of course, he chose to accentuate yet another aspectof modern capitalist culture as its most significant feature: the intense com-mitment to steady, methodical work, and hence the accumulation of wealthto a far greater degree than is required merely for the gratification of one’smaterial needs or desires.


Edward Keene 109

Historical interpretation: adequate causation and axiological affinity

These evaluative interpretations leave us with what Weber called an ‘histori-cal individual’,21 which both ‘aids in the recognition of the causally relevantcomponents of a concrete historical complex’ and is ‘a source of guidanceand direction, insofar as it “interprets” the content of an object . . . withrespect to its possible relations to values. In doing the latter, it presents“tasks” for the causal work of history and thus is its presupposition.’ 22 ForWeber, then, the principal job of evaluative interpretation is to constructan historical individual—a coherent synthesis of the significant elements ofwhat are always complex and multifaceted historical events—as a starting-point for, and perhaps also to give some guiding insights into, an analysis ofthe relationships between concrete historical patterns. Ultimately, despite itssubjective and partial character, the ideal type is supposed to be a heuristictool that helps us in ‘imputing an historical event to its real causes’. Whatdoes this mean, and how does it work?

To begin with, we need to understand that Weber’s view of causal explana-tion was quite different from the nomological or covering-law models thatare common to many other approaches to social science, and which aresometimes seen as the only methodologically proper way in which expla-nation can proceed. For Weber, the complexity of the world meant that‘an exhaustive causal explanation of any concrete phenomena in its fullreality is not only practically impossible—it is simply nonsense’. As a conse-quence, ‘the question of causality is not a question of laws but of concretecausal relationships; it is not a question of the subsumption of the eventunder some general rubric as a representative case but of its imputation asa consequence of some constellation’.23 As the term ‘constellation’ suggests,Weber did not think about causal relationships in terms of individual causesregularly having individual effects, identifiable through, for example, thestatistical analysis of correlations between variables. ‘The number and typeof causes which have influenced any given event are always infinite andthere is nothing in the things themselves to set some of them apart as alonemeriting attention.’24

Weber did not conclude, however, that it was impossible to engage incausal explanation; nor did he dispense with general laws, predictions orstatistical probabilities altogether. Although he did not see the identificationof general laws as the end of a proper causal analysis, he accepted them asuseful means in such an enquiry, if properly understood as heuristic toolsrather than actual statements of causal relations. In other words, predictionsbased on a covering-law model play a similar role to ideal types and, indeed,may be reformulated in that manner once their evaluative presuppositionsare made sufficiently clear. (An example would be models based on assump-tions about rational action, employed in much of Weber’s own substantivesociological work, where an ideal type of instrumentally rational social



action plays a central role.) Both provide what Weber calls an ‘interpretiveschema’ against which facts—that is to say, raw, unconceptualised empiricaldata—may be compared.

The ideal type does this by ‘constructing relationships which our imagina-tion accepts as plausibly motivated and hence as “objectively possible” andwhich appear as adequate from the nomological standpoint’.25 As one exam-ple, the ideal type may tell us how a particular set of relationships mightoperate under certain conditions and certain assumptions about individu-als’ motivation, as, for example, in ideal types of free markets peopled byrational utility-maximising agents used in economic theory.26 It thus allowsus to make judgements about the circumstances that ‘favour’ a particularoutcome, on the basis that such-and-such a constellation of factors makes it‘objectively possible’ that such-and-such an outcome will occur. We can thusproceed in an essentially negative way to ask what we imagine might havehappened if certain factors were removed from the original constellation,in order to discern their relative causal significance. As Weber concludes,‘we can finally estimate the degree to which a certain effect is “favoured”by certain “conditions”—although we cannot do it in a way which willbe perfectly unambiguous or even in accordance with the procedures ofthe calculus of probability’.27 Nevertheless, within the assumptions of theideal-typical framework that has previously been chosen, it remains a matterof logical deduction of possible causal relationships that should, if correct,be acceptable by other social scientists inspecting one’s analysis.

One further feature of Weber’s approach is his belief that causal analysisshould proceed axiologically as well as empirically. That is to say, we areoften interested in the logical relationships between systems of values andethics, here regarded—and this is what gives them their causal significance—as motives for action: ‘historical interpretation is not concerned withour ability to subordinate “facts” under abstract concepts and formu-lae . . . . On the contrary, it is concerned with . . . “understanding” concretehuman action in terms of its motives.’28 While Weber’s understanding ofsocial action attached considerable importance to the subjective meaningsattached to actions, it did not neglect the importance of placing these‘motives’ in the context of wider cultural systems of belief. In identifyingrelationships between ‘concrete historical events and patterns’, it is quiteproper for an historical interpretation to be based on the analysis of axi-ological relationships and affinities between systems of values. Moreover,this is always preferable to any understanding of verstehen as a subjective,emotional identification with the acting subject.29

An example: the ‘Protestant ethic’ thesis

Weber’s famous interpretation of the relationship between Protestantismand capitalism may be taken as an example of how his method works.


Edward Keene 111

He begins with an ideal type of modern capitalist culture (the ‘spirit’ ofcapitalism) that highlights one of its particular features:

the idea of a duty of the individual toward the increase of his capital,which is assumed as an end in itself. Truly what is here preached is notsimply a means of making one’s way in the world, but a peculiar ethic.The infraction of its rules is treated not as foolishness but as forgetful-ness of duty. That is the essence of the matter. It is not mere businessastuteness, that sort of thing is common enough, it is an ethos. This is thequality that interests us.30

This is, to use Weber’s terminology, an evaluative interpretation of capi-talism. It is not an attempt to identify the ‘class or average character’ ofcapitalism; capitalism in the sense of an economic system based on ‘free’labour, profit-oriented businesses and market exchange may exist withoutthis ethic, and the ethic itself may be found even in economies that are notcapitalistic in other respects.31 The point is not to work towards a compre-hensive taxonomy of different kinds of economic system. (To take just oneexample, Marx’s conceptual scheme, organised around production relations,would be much better for that purpose.) Weber’s goal is to relate moderneconomic behaviour to values in order to capture its meaning. He does, ofcourse, think that the particular values he has chosen for that purpose tell ussomething of unique significance about capitalism and that they representthe ‘fundamental basis’ of the ‘social ethic of capitalistic culture’; it is not anaberration but something that Weber expects will be ‘so familiar to us today’that most of the people in his intended audience will recognise it and feelits importance to their own ethical orientation.32

In terms of a causal analysis of the origins of modern capitalist culture,Weber’s principal claim, then, is not that the Reformation ‘caused’ moderncapitalism in the sense that it was decisive in producing all of the featuresof modern economic production and exchange: he never claims that Protes-tantism was a determinate cause of modern capitalism in the sense of a ‘ifP then Q’ type of argument. Rather, his claim is that certain aspects of thereligious beliefs that developed during the Reformation helped to shape thepeculiar ethical character of modern economic behaviour, which is an espe-cially significant element of capitalist culture as a whole. Therefore, moderncapitalism owes one of its culturally significant features to the Reformation,which can consequently be regarded as an ‘adequate cause’ of modern capi-talism: if the peculiarly Protestant idea of methodical work in the calling hadnot taken hold as it did in northern Europe and America, it is, one might say,‘objectively possible’ that capitalism in those parts of the world would havedeveloped in a very different manner.

Of course, the analysis in this particular case is almost entirely cast interms of axiological affinities: ‘What was the background of ideas which



could account for the sort of activity apparently directed toward profit aloneas a calling toward which the individual feels himself to have an ethical obli-gation?’ Weber’s goal, in other words, was to bring the historical systems ofvalues to which modern economic conduct is logically related into his finalunderstanding of the spirit of capitalism. Thus, at the end, we can recog-nise that modern capitalism does not simply involve instrumentally rationaleconomic conduct governed by utility maximisation, the profit motive andthe desire to accumulate wealth. More precisely, it is ‘rational conduct onthe basis of the idea of the calling’,33 the meaning of which can only beunderstood through an examination of the ascetic Protestant idea of thevocation. This illuminates the historical content of contemporary culturalvalues on the basis of which the initial evaluative interpretation was con-ducted, and so it expands our understanding of the meaning of moderncapitalist culture. Not only do we explain where our capitalistic culture hascome from; we also understand its meaning in a more profound manner thanhitherto. Thus, we reach Weber’s famous conclusion that the old conceptof the calling has been emptied of its earlier religious content, and hencethe disenchantment and substantive irrationality of the otherwise intensivelymethodical and rationalised nature of modern economic conduct: ‘the ideaof duty in one’s calling prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead reli-gious beliefs’.34 It should be clear that this is above all an ethical conclusionin terms of what it tells us about the nature of our own personalities as, inWeber’s words, ‘products of Western civilization’. At the end, the interpreta-tion, by relating our way of life to both historical phenomena and culturalvalues, helps us to understand something about its nature in the sense of its(limited) potential to realise an ideal of human flourishing, a diagnosis withparticular relevance to the sense of a crisis in personality and Bildung thatwas widely felt among Weber’s German contemporaries.35

Of course, Weber’s argument has met with sustained criticism, althoughoften in ways that miss the point of his essentially interpretive analysis ofa specific ethic within capitalist culture,36 and his entire approach to theinterpretation of social phenomena is not uncontroversial, to put it mildly.For reasons of space, however, I will not go into these here. My point is thatWeber’s interpretation of the ‘spirit’ of capitalism gives us a template for howone might set about interpreting international relations, and thus at leastgives us a starting point for thinking about the English School’s method inthis regard.

The English School and the interpretation of internationalrelations

The English School is notorious for its lack of attention to methodologi-cal questions, and the only writings that do engage with such issues tendto be critical of other approaches rather than offering much constructive


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of their own. The obvious example is Hedley Bull’s well-known article onthe ‘classical approach’, which (as his original essay for the British Commit-tee makes abundantly clear) was intended more as an attack on Americanbehaviouralist approaches than an attempt to define his own approach inany real detail. One criticism does recall Weber’s method, however; this isBull’s rejection of statistical analysis on the grounds that ‘strictly testableempirical generalisations can be established . . . but the steps from this to say-ing something significant about international relations . . . can be taken onlyif there is a self-indulgent lapse into the “classical” style’.37 The goal of ‘say-ing something significant about international relations’ sounds very similarto Weber’s desire to gain ‘knowledge of the cultural significance of concretehistorical events and patterns’, but here the trail runs dry: for Bull it involvesthe ‘exercise of judgement’ that is ultimately dependent on ‘rough and readyobservation, of a sort for which there is no room in logic or strict science’,38

a position that is tantamount to a denial of method altogether.That is not exactly a promising starting point. Nevertheless, it is possi-

ble to see one of the things that the English School was trying to do asan attempt to develop a distinctive interpretation of international relationsalong roughly similar lines to Weber’s method outlined above, and that, inthis respect, it is possible to identify moments of both ‘evaluative’ and ‘his-torical interpretation’ in their work (although never, as far as I am aware,explicitly put in those terms by the members of the school themselves).What I want to do now, then, is first to outline the principal theme of theEnglish School’s interpretation of international relations following the samestructure as my earlier discussion of Weber’s approach, and then to offersome reflections on the ways in which we might want to develop some oftheir concepts and arguments in order to pursue new interpretive lines ofenquiry in the future.

Can we find anything like Weber’s interpretation of the ‘spirit of capi-talism’ in the English School? The first answer to this question would bethat the members of the school did consistently call attention to one phe-nomenon within international relations (although always acknowledgingothers) to the extent that it has practically become the signature of theirwork: the existence of an international society. In essence, this concept wasdeveloped in opposition to the idea that international relations consist oflittle other than realpolitik. By contrast, the English School highlighted thefact that states do exhibit sociability in their relations with one another,for example, to paraphrase Bull’s famous definition, through their sense ofshared interests and values, through their obedience to rules of internationallaw, and through their participation in international institutions to regulatethe conduct of international actors.39

As I have said, the idea of an international society refers—in a suitably‘rough and ready’ way—to a particular kind of international interaction thatis distinct from the logic of realpolitik. In that respect it performs a role



that is not dissimilar to Weber’s concept of capitalism, which also helpsto distinguish one sort of economic activity from other, more ‘traditional-ist’, forms of work and entrepreneurship. Weber’s enquiry was not, however,concerned with capitalism as such, but with its spirit. The essentially descrip-tive proposition that an international society exists, even though that clearlybrings norms into the enquiry, is therefore insufficient to make the EnglishSchool’s work an interpretation of the meaning or cultural significance ofinternational relations. The crucial question is whether the school identi-fied anything that might be called the ‘spirit’ of international society, inthe same way that Weber isolated a particular ethic at the core of moderncapitalist culture.

The answer to this question lies in another of the central terms withinthe English School’s conceptual vocabulary: the idea of order. Order wascrucial to their enquiries precisely because, as Bull remarked in explainingwhy he chose to make his major treatise a ‘study of order in world politics’,the concept ‘places the emphasis on ends or values’.40 In other words, bythinking about international society in terms of its relationship to order,one is in effect relating it to a set of values that allows its significanceto be understood: the connection between international society and orderis pivotal to the English School’s evaluative interpretation of internationalrelations.

How, then, did they understand the values that are realised by the estab-lishment of order in world politics? Bull’s response in The Anarchical Societyrested on yet another tripartite distinction. First, there is what he calls ‘orderin social life’, which is a way of arranging society so as to achieve three basicgoals (although there may be more): to secure individuals against violence,to ensure that promises and agreements are kept and to ensure stabilityin the possession of things. ‘Life, truth and property’, in other words, aregoals that, according to Bull, every society respects and indeed must respectif it is to sustain anything that can reasonably be called ‘social life’. After‘order in social life’, we are introduced to the idea of ‘international order’,which is represented as ‘the elementary or primary goals of the society ofstates’.41 There are four of these: the preservation of the society of states itselfas ‘the prevailing form of universal political organisation’; the protectionof the external sovereignty of individual states; the maintenance of peace,in the sense of ensuring that war between states is an occasional hazardrather than a ‘normal condition’; and finally, international versions of ‘life,truth and property’, which translates here into the limitation of violence(e.g. in laws of war), respect for one’s treaty obligations (pacta sunt servanda)and the mutual recognition of sovereignty (which guarantees states’ ‘prop-erty’ in the sense of their territorial jurisdictions).42 Finally, we have ‘worldorder’, which Bull understands as ‘those patterns or dispositions of humanactivity that sustain the elementary or primary goals of social life amongmankind as a whole’. This concept is linked to the earlier idea of ‘order in


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social life’, since it includes, as well as order among political communities,order within those communities, and hence refers to the way in which thegeneral organisation of the world political system contributes to, or under-mines, domestic (and even municipal) arrangements for order.43 The mainpoint of this idea is to take account of the possibility that the ‘world politicalsystem’ might be organised in some form other than a society of states, and‘a standing question is whether world order might not better be served bysuch other forms’,44 which Bull took up in the final part of his book.

The concept of ‘international order’, then, might be seen as an attempt tocapture the ‘spirit’ of international society. Just as Weber’s ideal-typical capi-talist entrepreneur lives according to a particular work ethic, so we might saythat Bull’s ideal-typical state lives according to the ethic contained withinthe four goals of international society: it resists other forms of universalpolitical organisation, it respects other states’ sovereignty (and expects ordemands the same in return); it tries to keep the peace, most of the time;and it obeys international social norms such as pacta sunt servanda. The factthat no state lives up to these principles all of the time is not in itself aproblem: the construction is ideal-typical, and therefore is not meant to bea description of reality, but an illumination of an aspect of reality that ismeaningful because of its relationship to culturally significant values. Just asWeber would hope—probably rightly—that his description of the capitalistwork ethic would seem familiar to his readers as something important totheir way of life, so Bull would hope—again, I think, probably rightly—thatthe ethic he describes in the concept of international order is one that hisreaders will recognise as something significant.

From a Weberian perspective, however, there are still two glaring problemswith this way of conceptualising order and international order as a startingpoint for an interpretation of the meaning and cultural significance thatinternational society possesses. The first is the rather cavalier way in whichBull asserts the universality of the values contained in the concepts of orderin social life and world order. His claim that these represent goals that areshared by all societies is not grounded in any sociological or anthropologicalevidence whatsoever, but instead on an appeal to Herbert Hart’s account ofnatural law, where they are represented as ‘simple truisms’.45 That is a slenderreed from which to hang a claim to universal significance, and at severaltimes Bull seemed to acknowledge the parochial nature of his evaluativevision. For example, in an important British Committee paper he admittedthat ‘our discussions reflect the outlook of a former great power and colonialpower, and (despite everything) a presently still relatively rich one. We arenot accustomed to looking at international relations from the perspectivefrom which most of the world sees it, the perspective of the underdog.’46

The frankness of the admission is to be applauded, but where does it leaveBull’s grandiose claims to have identified universally valid goals of social lifein The Anarchical Society? His assertion that property is one of these goals,



in particular, looks uncomfortably like the perspective of a relatively richformer colonial great power, rather than something that can genuinely betaken as a universal value.

Beyond that, however, it is extremely doubtful whether Bull’s comparisonbetween the goals of the society of states and the ‘morally prior’ concept ofworld order is developed into an interpretation of an ethic of internationalorder so much as an evaluation of the moral worth of international society.Note that Weber does not ask whether the capitalist work ethic is a morallyacceptable doctrine; he is merely interested in where it comes from, why it isthe way it is and how it got to be that way. At the end of Weber’s enquiry, thebourgeois is left trapped in the ‘iron cage’ produced by disenchantment andrationalisation, but that is not a judgement on the morality of the capitalistwork ethic so much as an interpretation of the emptiness that results froma way of life that treats the accumulation of capital as an end in itself. Bull’senquiry offers something quite different: a comparison of the various waysin which the world political system might be organised in terms of whichcomes closest to realising the ‘universal’ values inherent in world order. Thefact that his argument is, to a large extent, a defence of the society of statesas the best available means for this goal should not blind us to the fact that,at the end, his enquiry in this particular work makes little attempt to expandour understanding of the values inherent in international order in terms oftheir axiological relationship to other ethics and ideas. That does not meanBull’s central line of argument in The Anarchical Society is wrong or evenmisdirected: a critical analysis of the moral value of the society of states interms of the needs of world order is, it hardly needs saying, an extremelyworthwhile intellectual activity.47 But it does not fulfil the causal aspirationsof the Weberian project.

As we have seen, the question Weber posed to open out possibilities forhistorical interpretation was to ask about the ‘background of ideas’ thataccounted for the ethic at the heart of modern capitalistic culture. Therecertainly is an attempt to answer something like this question within thework of the English School, including Bull’s. A formulation that more closelyresembles Weberian arguments about ‘axiological affinity’ is Adam Watson’scontention that ‘The concept of independence for a multitude of small statesin our present international society . . . has evolved from the Westphalian set-tlement and bears an inherited resemblance to it.’48 No one in the EnglishSchool would claim that international society today is exactly the same asthe European political system in the mid-seventeenth century. They fre-quently point out, for example, that the shift from the dynastic principleto the idea of nationalist self-determination has wrought major changes inthe composition of international society and of the principles of legitimacyaccording to which, for example, the principle of recognition of sovereigntyis supposed to operate. But Watson’s contention satisfies a Weberian notionof causality.


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One of the most sustained examples of this line of historical interpretationwas developed in Martin Wight’s essay on ‘Western values’. For a start, thisdoes not suffer from the hubris of Bull’s attempt to identify ‘universal’ valuesof order in social life. It begins by highlighting a culturally narrower rangeof principles that he thought could be seen as constituting ‘something like aconsensus of Western diplomatic opinion’. To the question of how ‘interna-tional order’ should be conceived, he then canvasses three possible replies: itis an ‘even distribution of power’; it is a ‘distinct international social order’and it is a ‘distinct moral or ideological order’.49 The first idea of interna-tional order is obviously bound up with the notion of the preservation ofthe balance of power, closely akin to the first of Bull’s ‘elementary or primarygoals’ of the society of states; it is the formulation of the concept that Wightsees as most closely associated with the Western tradition of diplomacy thatforms the core of his enquiry. The other two definitions of internationalorder—as a social order and as a moral order—Wight sees as ‘bound up withthe notion of international society as a civitas maxima, with the assimilationof international society to domestic society’, but viewed from very differentperspectives: the idea of a ‘social order’ is favoured by conservatives, the ideaof a ‘moral order’ by revolutionaries.

Thus we are offered three ways of understanding the ‘spirit’ of interna-tional society: as a balance of power that should be managed or preserved,as a social order that should be defended and as a moral order that shouldbe realised. (A little later in Wight’s discussion, there is a small but sig-nificant change in his terminology. ‘Balance of power’ and ‘moral order’remain intact, but the idea of a ‘distinct international social order’ under-goes a subtle change to reappear as the ‘legal order’, presumably on the(understandable but not entirely legitimate) assumption that the social orderapproved by conservatives finds expression in the rules of international lawthat prevail at any given time.) The distinction between ‘the moral order,legal order and the balance of power’ then provides the conceptual frame-work for a sweeping and remarkably succinct historical interpretation of thedevelopment of Western diplomacy across the entire modern era. Grotius,according to Wight, collapsed the moral and legal order together, supposingthat ‘there was no general demand of unsatisfied justice . . . to create a cleav-age’ between them, and effectively ignored the question of the balance ofpower. After Westphalia, the balance of power rose to the ascendancy, andthe moral and legal orders became identified with its preservation (to the dis-may of the Grotians). After 1815, ‘a cleavage appeared between the legal andmoral orders, as the Vienna settlement fell into disrespect for obstructing therightful claims of nationality’ (but these discrepancies could, up to a point,be corrected without fundamentally undermining the balance of power,thereby providing for the considerable stability of the nineteenth-centuryEuropean political system). When the pursuit of national self-determinationcould no longer be contained without destabilising the balance of power



(i.e. German unification), the introduction of collective security in theLeague of Nations after 1919 involved, as Wight put it, the institutional-isation of the balance of power on behalf of the legal order. A renewedconsistency between the legal and the moral orders rested on the beliefthat ‘the Versailles Settlement, the existing order, embodied no substantialinjustice, when compared with what had come to challenge it’ and that ‘itrepresented, in broad outline, a peace of reason and justice’. Finally, since1945, the balance of power was ‘frozen into the balance of terror’, removingsome of the insecurities attendant on a more flexible distribution of power,and so providing space for the reassertion of the idea of moral order overagainst the legal order, particularly evident in the West’s acceptance of therevolutionary claims of decolonisation.50

Whereas I have suggested that Bull’s argument in The Anarchical Societyeschewed historical interpretation for critical moral evaluation, Wight’s anal-ysis here might be accused of slipping into historical narrative, albeit abrilliantly succinct one, rather than interpretation. The question one mightask here is how much Wight’s account of the shifting contours of Westerndiplomatic opinion expands our understanding of the ‘spirit’ of the interna-tional society that we live in at present. Weber’s analysis, as we have seen,purported to tell the modern bourgeois something new about the ethic bywhich he lives, even if it is only to point out the emptiness of a way of lifethat devotes itself to a vocation as an end in itself. In Wight’s essay, it ishard to see how, by charting the various phases of Western diplomatic cul-ture over the last few hundred years, he adds to our grasp of where its ethoscame from, in terms of its relationship to other value systems, or offers anew perspective on the meaning of ‘Western values’ for us today.

Reconstructing the English School

The above criticisms may seem to accuse the English School of not doingsomething that they never claimed to be doing anyway. Up to a point, this istrue, but I hope that I have also made it clear that the school contains usefulresources for an interpretive analysis of international relations. The school’sevaluative interpretation—their insistence that ‘international society’ wasnot just a classificatory concept—could be developed into an ideal-typicalone by relating it to the values inherent in the concept of order. While thatdoes not mean it is wrong for scholars such as Buzan to develop the EnglishSchool’s conceptual vocabulary in the direction of taxonomic classification,it suggests that the school may be taken in other directions, by fleshing outthe implications of their idea of order in world politics. The English Schoolis tantalisingly on the edge of an interpretation of international relationswhich can reveal for us not only where our present system came from, butits actual meaning for us.


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As one example of how the school’s conceptual vocabulary might beadapted for that purpose, I have emphasised, in another place, the contrastbetween toleration and civilisation as goals of order in world politics (anevaluative interpretation that is not absent from the work of the EnglishSchool).51 Following Wight, I would certainly locate both within a Westerndiplomatic tradition rather than claiming a Bullian ‘universal’ validity foreither. Where I think my account goes beyond Wight, especially in hisessay on Western values, is that I have sought to show how the tensionbetween these goals is defused through racial discrimination within thecontext of a bifurcated international society, with one set of rules for ‘civi-lized’ peoples and another for everyone else. Western values, in other words,are and have always been fundamentally dichotomous, which became anethical dilemma when racial or cultural discrimination became unaccept-able in the application of international law or the operation of internationalorganisations.

To say, as is often done, that we live in a world where ‘new’ ideas abouthuman rights and so forth are beginning to come onto the agenda of inter-national relations, or that international society has undergone a ‘solidaristturn’, is a misinterpretation of the role that Western values play in interna-tional society. The values are not new at all; it is the acuteness of the tensionbetween them that is new. In that work, I posed the question of whetherWestern values can ever be anything other than a self-contradictory inter-national ethic within a non-discriminatory global international legal order.That is not a defence of the moral value of international society in the man-ner of Bull’s The Anarchical Society, nor is it an historical narrative of thecareer of Western diplomacy in the manner of Wight’s essay on ‘Westernvalues’. It is an interpretation of the ethic by which we (or at least, thoseof who are, to use a Weberian phrase, ‘products of Western civilization’)conduct our international relations, and, not unlike Weber’s analysis of the‘spirit of capitalism’, it uses an enquiry into the ‘background of ideas’ to saywhere our current ethic has come from and to gain a new perspective on itsstrengths and weaknesses as a code to live by in the present.

My argument in Beyond the Anarchical Society follows in the EnglishSchool’s footsteps by concerning itself with the international implications of‘Western values’, and one might very well say that this is only one amongstmany interpretive perspectives from which we might wish to look at theworld. The world is not exclusively composed of ‘products of Western civ-ilization’, and the values associated with that particular way of life cannever be expected to speak to all the ethics according to which interna-tional relations are conducted, thus limiting this interpretation’s resonanceas a statement of the dilemma that lies at the heart of how ‘we’ understandwhat is culturally significant in the international society and internationallegal order today. An Islamic perspective, to take a more or less randomexample, might see the cultural significance of the modern states-system



in a completely different way, perhaps in terms of its relevance to the val-ues contained in shari’a; an American perspective, rooted in a substantiallydifferent diplomatic tradition from modern Europe, might similarly have analternative perspective on the ‘spirit’ of international society, such as a moreuniversalist one. My own view is that the main fault of the English School’swork is not that they adopted one particular interpretive lens—it is as good,or as bad, as any other—but that they did not fully depict the thorniness ofthe dilemma that is contained therein, a dilemma for which one can reallygive no better name than the traditional English vice of hypocrisy. To be theworld’s leading imperial power and simultaneously to proclaim the virtuesof a society of independent sovereign states is a truly glaring instance ofsuch hypocrisy, but to find it laid bare one needs to consult the works ofharder-minded critics such as E.H. Carr or George Orwell.

Besides adopting alternative perspectives on the spirit of internationalsociety that take something other than ‘Western values’ as their centralfocus, there are other promising routes for an interpretive sociology ofinternational relations. One possibility would be to look more closely atwhat Wight called the ‘social order’ which conservatives saw as the mostvaluable dimension of international society. This picks up on a themethat recurs throughout Wight’s work, finds occasional echoes in Bull’sand Watson’s work on diplomacy and even extends to other, non-EnglishSchool, understandings of the concept of international society, such as HansMorgenthau’s.52 These are the shared values inherent within ‘diplomaticculture’, such as the shared values of the ‘aristocratic international’ thatdominated international society in the early nineteenth century. Where didthese ‘diplomatic values’ come from, and what is their relevance to the val-ues of the ‘diplomatic community’ today? The ‘spirit’ of international societyneed not only be found in the ethical principles that lie behind the rules ofinternational law or the writings of international jurists: one of the clear-est messages of Wight’s work is that it is also to be found in the writings,speeches and actions of diplomatic practitioners. Again, such an interpretivefocus would obviously have its limits. At the very least, it looks likely to berather attached to the beliefs and actions of officialdom, when one mightthink that the views, mental universe, one might say habitus of activistswithin non-official organisations would provide equally interesting mate-rial for an interpretive enquiry.53 But for now my goal has merely been tolocate the intellectual resources for an interpretive sociology of internationalrelations that exist within the work of the English School.


1. See, for example, Richard Little, ‘The English School’s Contribution to the Studyof International Relations’, European Journal of International Relations (Vol. 6,2000), pp. 395–422.


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2. Martin Shaw, ‘Global Society and Global Responsibility: The Theoretical, Histor-ical and Political Limits of “International Society” ’, Millennium (Vol. 21, 1992),pp. 421–434.

3. An illustrative but not exhaustive list of various social theoretical engage-ments with the English School might include Habermasian work by AndrewLinklater, The Transformation of Political Community: Ethical Foundations of thePost-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), and Christian Reus-Smit,The Moral Purpose of the State: Culture, Social Identity and Institutional Rationality inInternational Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999); the Gadame-rian approach of Richard Shapcott, Justice, Community and Dialogue in Interna-tional Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Foucauldian,among other post-structuralist influences, work by James Der Derian, On Diplo-macy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), andDer Derian (ed.), International Theory: Critical Investigations (London: Macmillan,1995).

4. Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1999).

5. Barry Buzan, From International to World Society? English School Theory and the SocialStructure of Globalisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), and seealso Buzan, ‘The English School: An Underexploited Resource in IR’, Review ofInternational Studies (Vol. 27, 2001), especially pp. 482–483.

6. For example, Terry Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 33–34; Hidemi Suganami, ‘The Structureof Institutionalism: An Anatomy of British Mainstream International Relations’,International Relations (Vol. 7, 1983), p. 2365; Stanley Hoffmann, ‘InternationalSociety’, in J. D. B. Miller and R. J. Vincent (eds), Order and Violence: Hedley Bull andInternational Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 18; Martha Finnemore,‘Exporting the English School’, Review of International Studies (Vol. 27, 2001),p. 512; and Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of Interna-tional Relations: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006), p. 103. It is worth noting one important dissenter from this pointof view: James L. Richardson, ‘The Academic Study of International Relations’, inMiller and Vincent (eds), Order and Violence, pp. 140–185 (see especially p. 162).

7. His sociological, political and historical work has, of course, had a substantialinfluence on international relations theory, especially through his analysis ofthe modern state as a form of ‘legitimate domination’: see, for example, R. B.J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1993); John Hobson and Leonard Seabrooke,‘Reimagining Weber: Constructing International Society and the Social Balanceof Power’, European Journal of International Relations (Vol. 7, No. 2, 2001), pp. 239–274; and many of the contributions in Hobson and Stephen Hobden (eds),Historical Sociology of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2002). Among the few works in international relations theory with a moremethodological focus on concept formation, notable examples of engagementwith Weber are Tarak Barkawi, ‘Strategy as a Vocation: Weber, Morgenthau andModern Strategic Studies’, and Hans-Karl Pichler, ‘The Godfathers of “Truth”:Max Weber and Carl Schmitt in Morgenthau’s Theory of Power Politics’, both inReview of International Studies (Vol. 24, 1998), pp. 159–184 and 185–200, respec-tively. See also Patrick Thaddeus Jackson and Stuart J. Kaufman, ‘Security Scholars



for a Sensible Foreign Policy: A Study in Weberian Activism’, Perspectives on Politics(Vol. 5, No. 1, 2007), pp. 95–103.

8. Arguably the single most important work to come out of the English School,certainly the most influential, was, after all, ‘a study of order in world politics’,rather than simply a study of international society: Hedley Bull, The AnarchicalSociety: A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977).

9. Martin Wight, ‘Western Values in International Relations’, in Herbert Butterfieldand Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of InternationalPolitics (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966), pp. 89–131.

10. Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, trans. E. Shils and H. Finch (NewYork: Free Press, 1949), p. 111. Except where specifically noted, all emphases inthis and subsequent quotations are as in the original text.

11. Weber, Methodology, pp. 81–82.12. Ibid., p. 92.13. As well as The Methodology of the Social Sciences, see also Max Weber, Roscher and

Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics, trans. Guy Oakes (London:Macmillan, 1975) and Critique of Stammler, trans. Guy Oakes (London: Macmil-lan, 1977). The main secondary works I have used to arrive at my understandingare Thomas Burger, Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation: History, Laws andIdeal Types (Durham: Duke University Press, 1976); Susan Hekman, Max Weberand Contemporary Social Theory (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1983);Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociology (Cambridge: PolityPress, 1994); John Drysdale, ‘How are Social Scientific Concepts Formed? A Recon-struction of Max Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation’, Sociological Theory(Vol. 14, 1996), pp. 71–78; and Fritz Ringer, Max Weber’s Methodology: The Uni-fication of the Cultural and Social Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1997).

14. Weber, Methodology, pp. 81 and 90.15. Ibid., pp. 93 and 101.16. Ibid., p. 101.17. Ibid., pp. 150 and 151.18. Ibid., pp. 83–84 and 151. Note the proximity here to the thesis of the ‘essential

contestability’ of complexly appraisive concepts: see Keene, ‘The Developmentof the Concept of International Society’ in B. Neufeld and M. Ebata (eds), Con-fronting the Political:International Relations at the Millennium (London: MacmillanPress, 2001).

19. Weber, Methodology, p. 111. See also Kalberg, Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociol-ogy, p. 85, and Ringer, Weber’s Methodology, pp. 49–50.

20. Weber, Methodology, pp. 91 and 103. See also David Zaret, ‘From Weber to Parsonsand Schutz: The Eclipse of History in Modern Social Theory’, in Peter Hamilton(ed.), Max Weber (2): Critical Assessments, Vol. 4 (London: Routledge, 1991).

21. On the tension between ‘historical individuals’ and more general, sociologi-cal kinds of ideal types in Weber’s work, see the excellent commentaries inBurger, Weber’s Theory of Concept Formation, especially p. 119; Hekman, Weber andContemporary Social Theory, pp. 38–59; and Ringer, Weber’s Methodology.

22. Weber, Methodology, p. 160.23. Weber, Methodology, pp. 78–79. Weber’s understanding of explanation in terms

of causal relationships rather than causal laws is close to some recent work onexplanation in international relations theory: see in particular Alexander Wendt,


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‘On Constitution and Causation in International Relations’, Review of Interna-tional Studies (Vol. 24, No. 5, 1998), pp. 101–118, and Hidemi Suganami, ‘Agents,Structures, Narratives’, European Journal of International Relations (Vol. 5, No. 3,1999), pp. 365–386.

24. Weber, Methodology, p. 78.25. Ibid., p. 92.26. Ibid., pp. 89–90.27. Ibid., p. 183.28. Ibid., p. 196.29. Ibid., p. 181.30. Weber, The Protestant Ethic, p. 51.31. See Ibid., pp. 65–66.32. Ibid., p. 54. The mere fact that Weber’s thesis has held the interest of so many

readers—even if they disagree with his actual analysis of how this feature of mod-ern capitalism emerged—suggests that he was justified in this assumption. Ofcourse, it is possible that we may not feel quite the same way today, and it is cer-tainly possible that Weber was describing a peculiarly bourgeois ethos and thathis study primarily appealed to a bourgeois readership. That limits the relevanceof his interpretation, but does not, in my view, invalidate it.

33. Ibid., pp. 75 and 180.34. Ibid., p. 182.35. On the ethical question of the individual’s Lebensfuhrung as Weber’s chief con-

cern, see Wilhelm Hennis, Max Weber: Essays in Reconstruction, trans. Keith Tribe(London: Allen & Unwin, 1988); see also Harvey Goldman, Max Weber andThomas Mann: Calling and the Shaping of the Self (Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress, 1999).

36. See Hennis, Max Weber, for a discussion of the debate among Weber’s contempo-raries.

37. Hedley Bull, ‘International Relations as an Academic Pursuit’, Australian Outlook(Vol. 26, 1972), p. 259.

38. Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, WorldPolitics (Vol. 18, 1966), pp. 361 and 367. Elsewhere, in ‘New Directions in theTheory of International Relations’, International Studies (Vol. 14, 1975), p. 279,Bull suggested—quite counter to the basic principles of Weber’s neoKantianism—that concepts based on empirical generalisation are ‘verified or falsified byexamination of the world.’ See also Richardson, ‘Academic Study’, pp. 161–162.

39. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 13. As I have argued elsewhere, while Bull’s is byfar the best known definition of the concept of international society, it was notthe only formulation to come out of the English School, and others, notablyWight and Herbert Butterfield, questioned the statism inherent in Bull’s defini-tion: see Wight, ‘Western Values’, p. 101; Butterfield,‘Comments on Hedley Bull’sPaper on the Grotian Conception of International Society’, in British CommitteePapers, Chatham House, 1962; and Keene, ‘The Development of the Concept ofInternational Society’. I will return to this point later.

40. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 4.41. Ibid., pp. 4–5 and 8.42. Ibid., pp. 16–19.43. Ibid., pp. 20 and 22.44. Ibid., p. 21.



45. Ibid., p. 321, n2, and see H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1961).

46. Hedley Bull, ‘Justice in World Politics’, British Committee Papers (Chatham House,no date), p. 1.

47. See, for example, the work of Andrew Linklater as a development of this themewithin the English School.

48. Adam Watson, The Evolution of International Society (London: Routledge, 1992),p. 196.

49. Wight, ‘Western Values’, pp. 90–91 and 103.50. Ibid., pp. 106–108.51. Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchical Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World

Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).52. As well as Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 183 and 316–317, and Adam Watson,

Diplomacy: The Dialogue Between States (London: Methuen, 1982), especially pp.110–111, see also Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Powerand Peace, Second Edition (New York: Knopf, 1959); and Raymond Aron (whorefers to this as transnational society), Peace and War: A Theory of InternationalRelations, trans. Richard Howard and Annette Baker Fox (New York: Doubleday,1960), especially p. 105.

53. See the fascinating study by Stephen Hopgood, Keepers of the Flame: UnderstandingAmnesty International (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006).


6Theorising the Causes of Order:Hedley Bull’s The Anarchical SocietyK. J. Holsti

The English School refers to the characterization of international politicsthat emphasizes the role of norms, rules, and laws in tempering the rela-tions between states. Although its status as a ‘school’ has been challenged,the characterization has clearly supplemented other approaches to thefield, such as realism and constructivism. The origins of the school wereBritish, as its founders—with the notable exception of Hedley Bull, who wasAustralian—were all noted International Relations scholars in England. Inrecent years, the central concept of the school, international society, or thesociety of states has migrated far beyond the British Isles, and today hasuniversal appeal. It has even made significant inroads into that bastion ofscientism, the United States, where it has gained adherents and becomeinstitutionalized in a section of the International Studies Association. Theterm ‘English School’ thus refers to origins, and not to the broad impact ithas had on international relations studies around the world.

The main works that developed the concept of international societyappeared in the 1950s and 1960s, culminating in the publication of HedleyBull’s classic, The Anarchical Society, in 1977. Only two decades after thisdate did American scholars begin to take seriously the main notions of theEnglish School. While the role of rules, norms, and law in international pol-itics had some purchase in the academic study of International Relations inthe United States prior to the 1990s, these subjects were largely confined totechnical analysis of international law, a subject that had unfortunately sepa-rated from Political Science under the impact of the ‘behavioural revolution’of the 1960s, a revolution that sought to convert International Relations intoa formal science. Questions of sovereignty, the ethics of humanitarian inter-vention, the relationship between culture and international society, and thespread of international society to the former colonial world did not lendthemselves to the quantification, formal models, and empirical proof thatwere the hallmarks of the social sciences in the United States for much ofthe latter part of the twentieth century.

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126 Theorising the Causes of Order

Although concerns about the role of norms, rules, and laws in interna-tional politics began to appear in the United States in the 1990s, primarilyin the works of Nicholas Onuf, Martha Finnemore, and the Keck andSikkink study,1 these efforts, though acknowledging the work of HedleyBull, were not inspired primarily by him. Why not? Because these authorsregarded the leaders of the English School as methodologically impreciseor indifferent. Cause–effect relationships were seldom specified, the maingeneralizations about international society were not couched in formulasthat could be easily or systematically checked against either historical orcontemporary data, and most independent variables were not clearly iden-tified.2 Finally, much of the early work on the English School analyzedtraditions of thought rather than domains of diplomatic action. In brief,American critics deeply committed to the canons of the scientific methodand positivism, faulted the English School’s methodological naivete. Therewas simply no way that the main ideas of the school, as they had beendeveloped in the works of Wight, Watson, James, Bull, Vincent, and others,could be verified.

Hedley Bull would have agreed with some of these critiques, but thenwould judge them irrelevant. To him, no area of study such as Interna-tional Relations can be reduced to an exact science. The subject is inherentlyone where judgment, tentative conclusions, and interpretation reign. Bulladmitted that theoretical work in international relations should be coher-ent, precise, orderly, and consistent with the philosophical foundations ofmodern science but this science is not confined to those matters that canbe logically or mathematically proved or verified according to ‘strict’ proce-dures.3 Intuition, judgment, and a deep familiarity with history are necessarycomponents of the theoretical enterprise, and any generalizations emergingfrom them are necessarily temporary and are subject to challenge. Knowl-edge of social domains is always contingent and open to interpretation andre-interpretation. To reduce an area of inquiry as subjective as the theoryof international relations to science would, in his famous barb, ‘commit[us] to a course of intellectual Puritanism that keeps [the scientists] . . . asremote from the substance of international politics as the inmates of aVictorian nunnery were from the study of sex.’4 But Finnemore’s critiqueof the English School does not insist that ‘science’ be reduced to mathemat-ical precision, formal quantification, and endless replication to tie down theresults of research as the ‘truth’. It is more a question of making assump-tions explicit, clearly identifying cause–effect relationships, and marshallingevidence to support the main generalizations. As she puts it, ‘English Schoolauthors . . . almost never provide systematic discussions about the rules ofevidence.’5 Indeed, many of the critiques of the English School’s lack ofconcern with methodological issues are not far distant from Bull’s owncommitment to coherence, precision, and the philosophical foundations ofmodern science.


K. J. Holsti 127

Why Bull?

This chapter concentrates on a single work, Hedley Bull’s The AnarchicalSociety . It does so for three main reasons:

1 The concept of ‘international society’ is the main theoretical innova-tion of the school, and Hedley Bull more than anyone else developedit, or more precisely, rescued it from the rather inchoate formulationsof seventeenth- to nineteenth-century European analysts such as Grotius,Vattel, von Gentz, and Heeren. All the historians of the English Schoolacknowledge Bull’s central role in the development of the concept.6

Charles Manning and Martin Wight were among the first to resuscitate theidea, but their writings were predominantly historical-descriptive and tax-onomic rather than causal. Bull’s work has served as the main inspirationfor further work of this genre.7

2 The writings that can be included in the English School canon are dis-parate, covering a broad range of subjects, and often concerned withnormative rather than empirical issues. The distinguishing mark of theEnglish School as far as methodology is concerned is that it has nodistinctive methodology, or if one wants to put it in a more negativeway, it ranges from the methodologically indifferent to the promiscuous.No single essay can hope to cover the range of methods and modes ofargumentation that dot the literature.

3 Bull’s work, despite his disclaimers about rigorous methodology in gen-eral, is one of the few in the school that combines a constitutive form oftheorizing with causal analysis. While Wight and Watson, among others,have a great deal to say about different kinds of international systems,they do not outline a normative problematique.

I will proceed by reconstructing the series of steps by which Bull can besaid to create a theory of international order as opposed to a description ortaxonomy of the domain of international politics. I am concerned primarilywith Bull’s notions of constitution and causation, his use of evidence, andhis categorization. Much of his work on ‘world society’ is more normativeand speculative and thus will be omitted from consideration.

Selecting the problem

All theorizing about international politics begins with a normative ratherthan ‘scientific’ maneuver: What is the problem to be explained?8 We choosea problem for exploration and evaluation because we think it is in some wayimportant in the sense that it generates concern and the hope or expecta-tion that if we understand it better, policy choices will be made to alleviateor rectify a situation that we believe is sub-optimal. In the seventeenth- andeighteenth-century Europe, the critical problem of international politics was



the threat of hegemony, or ‘universal monarchy’ as it was then called. What-ever the great risks inherent in a system of sovereign states (anarchy), theywere preferred to the costs invoked by an imperial or suzerain system. By thelate nineteenth century, war was added to the problem of hegemony. Warhad brought such catastrophic consequences to its participants that scholarsand publicists of international politics thought something should be doneabout it. The academic literature of a theoretical orientation throughout thetwentieth century was clearly concerned with this issue: the causes of warand the conditions of peace. This was not an artifact of the idealism ofthe 1920s. Kenneth Waltz’ major theoretical essay, Theory of InternationalPolitics (1979), has as its normative core five problems to be explained:(1) the recurrence of war; (2) the necessity to avoid relative gains; (3) whyand how political units are socialized; (4) the compelling need to maximizeautonomy; and (5) the most stable (e.g., non-threatening) form of powerbalancing.9

Hedley Bull’s original contribution to the theory of international politicsis to shift its problematique from war/peace/stability to international order.Note here that he is not concerned with the international order, as manyauthors today talk about the world order,10 but with the more generic issueof order in international politics. This is a move of considerable importancebecause immediately he lifts the problem from the particular to the gen-eral. International order transcends time, place, and personality. War, thegreat practice to be explained—and avoided in policy—in most other the-ories, now becomes a phenomenon that can play both a constructive anda destructive role in international order. Many of those phenomena that inother theories of international relations tend to cause wars (e.g., balancesor imbalances of power, alliances, arms races, etc.), now become open ques-tions. Order is a broader concept than any of these; for Bull, it is the thingto be defined and explained, for clearly international politics is not just awar of all against all, as Hobbes and his successors would have it, but isa domain of strife, occasional violence, and cooperation. Bull’s normativeassumption is that order is preferable to disorder, an assumption that hedoes not examine but one that merits consideration.11 Rather than dwellingon this rather important assumption, Bull jumps directly into the questionof the compatibility of order and justice at the international level.

To Bull, order is constituted of the ‘pattern of activity that sustains theelementary or primary goals of the society of states, or international soci-ety’ (p. 8). It is all the things states do to fulfill three essential goals: thepreservation of the system of states, the preservation of the independenceof its members, and peace in the sense not of ‘permanent peace,’ but thatmembers of the international society see peace as the normal rather thanexceptional condition of their mutual relations (pp. 16–17). So order is a‘pattern of activity’ among states that consciously or not promotes or sus-tains the international society. In a more generic level, Bull suggests, order


K. J. Holsti 129

is any activity that make social life possible, namely assurances for life andsafety, the sanctity of contracts, and the assurance that ‘the possession ofthings will remain stable to some degree, and will not be subject to chal-lenges that are constant and without limit’ (p. 4). Bull is careful to point outthat it is elements ‘such as these’ (p. 4) that make social life possible. In otherwords the trinity is necessary but may not be sufficient. He leaves it open forfurther analysis: other conditions may also contribute to order. Bull’s stanceinvites further work rather than closure.

Order is constituted of these three essential elements. They are to be foundin all levels of society and are not confined to our current notions of nationalsociety. Thus, wherever they are found, at whatever analytical level, we haveorder. The international domain is a society precisely because it containsall three elements, just as they would also be found in a family. Hence theterm ‘international society’. It is more than just the presence of norms andrule-bound behaviour. It is any collectivity where the three elements arefound.

If order is also a ‘pattern of activity’, then he implies it is a variablerather than a constant. The pattern of activity may change over time andthose activities that, for example, help sustain the system or order canalso be reversed. We have good evidence of this sort of change when wecompare the diplomatic history of, say, eighteenth-century Europe withthe contemporary situation. In the earlier period, conquest was considereda right inherent in sovereignty. Territories were conquered on almost anannual basis, an event that provided cartographers with employment, butdisturbed the foreign ministries when they threatened to upset the bal-ance of power. By contrast, conquest is no longer considered legitimate.With only a few minor exceptions (e.g., North Vietnam–South Vietnam,Goa, East Timor) there have been almost no permanent conquests inthe world since 1945. This dramatic change in practices and norms canbe said to strengthen two essential components of order, the sanctityof possessions and the common interest in the preservation of the sys-tem of states. The United Nations Charter prohibition against the threator use of force in international relations is designed (but not faithfullyobserved) to sustain the third component of order, international peace andsecurity.

It would be difficult to contest Bull’s selection of the constituent ele-ments of international order, those three goals that make social life possibleand continuous. Where do they come from? Bull uses the domestic anal-ogy, by asking initially where does order come from in society? His list ofthree essentials—life, truth, and property—is not exhaustive, as he notes,but these three or something like them are necessary conditions. He invitesspeculation on others, again consistent with his view that in the areas ofsocial life, including international politics, certainty and closure are seldompossible.



Bull’s use of the domestic analogy to illustrate the constituent elementsof order raises the question of transferring concepts from one domain toanother. Adherents of the Hobbesian view of international politics mightattack Bull on this point, arguing that a domain of anarchy cannot becompared to a domain of governance. Bull’s answer points to ‘statelesssocieties’ such as the Nuer and Dinka in Africa to demonstrate that anar-chy, the lack of formal governance, does not preclude the developmentof common interests and a common commitment to maintain and sus-tain the relevant system or to provide sanctity and security for the livesand properties of those that make up the system. The whole enterpriseis also sustained by social history, common identities, traditions, andrules. Cooperation to create and maintain a society does not occur ona one-time basis, by ‘rational actors’ meeting to resolve their ‘coordina-tion problems’ as liberal institutionalists and game theorists would haveit, but develops through history, often nurtured by a common culture andidentity.

There is thus nothing arbitrary in Bull’s choices in defining the constituentelements international order. His definition is nominal in a sense, but itultimately has empirical referents in both domestic and anarchical societies.One does not have to stretch the imagination to see all three requirements inoperation today. Terms like ‘the international community,’ documents suchas the Untied Nations Charter or the Pact of Paris (1991), norms against theuse of force and the de-legitimization of conquest are all related, ultimately,to the common wish to preserve the system and the independence and ter-ritorial integrity of its members. What is perhaps surprising is that so manymodern theorists of international politics have overlooked the elements ofsociety and order in the field.

Bull’s problematique is more complicated than just offering a rather unchal-lengeable definition of order in the international society. The question is notso much whether there is an international society characterized by the pat-terns of activity that lead to order, but how this order is maintained in theface of serious challenges. It is one thing to outline the constituent elementsof order at any social level. It is another to account for their developmentand/or presence. At this point, Bull switches to a formal causal analysis. Con-stituent questions concern the ‘what’ or the ‘how possible?’ Causal analysisis required to explain ‘why’ questions.12

Step 2: How international society is maintained?

Order is an outcome of three interrelated factors: rules such as mutual recog-nition of sovereign independence, institutions that support these rules, andunderlying these and most fundamental, a common interest in maintainingthe system. This causal explanation of sustaining order can be representedas in Figure 6.1.


K. J. Holsti 131

Sources Outcomes

Institutions (support) norms, rules, laws (contribute to) 1. sanctity of contracts2. stability of life and

possessions3. limits on the use of

force

Common interest in maintaining the system

Figure 6.1 The Maintenance of International Order: Bull’s Causal Model

The third causal variable, the conscious or unconscious common inter-est in maintaining the system, is the key to order and demarcates aninternational society from a system of states.

Bull roughly hypothesizes the connections between the independent vari-ables. Thus, international institutions entail ‘habits and practices shapedtoward the realization of common goals’ (p. 71). They also help make ruleseffective. Rules ‘provide the means whereby international society movesfrom the vague perception of a common interest to a clear conception ofthe kind of conduct it requires’ (p. 68). They also promote behavior that sus-tains the three goals, sanctity of contracts, stability of life and possessions,and limits on the use of force. Bull could have said a great deal more onthese critical connections, but appears to have been content to provide mereoutlines or hypothetical relationships.13

Bull rejects any functional explanation of order and insists that inter-national institutions as he defines them (see below), rules, and sense ofcommon interest in maintaining the system are part of the efficient cau-sation of international order, or in his words, they are ‘among [my ital.] thenecessary and sufficient conditions of its occurrence’ (p. 71). Note again hiscaution. His modest (e.g., underspecified) model of causation is not exclu-sive. Unlike Morgenthau, Waltz, and many other theorists who insist thattheir explanatory models are complete, Bull never invokes closure but invitesadditions, modifications, or elaborations. It is a stance of reasonable certaintyand some face validity within an intellectual exercise that, given the natureof the subject, is necessarily uncertain.

The causal model explains the maintenance of order (Chapter 3 of his textis entitled ‘How is Order Maintained in World Politics?’). As suggested, Bullis more interested in how an order is sustained than how it originated, apoint his critics have elaborated as ignoring the issue altogether. This crit-icism is not valid. Take the issue of the common interest in maintainingthe system, the underlying condition that allows or ‘causes’ institutions andrules of coexistence to develop. Bull does not enter into a historical discus-sion of the origins of the European states system, but outlines four possible



conditions that explain the emergence of this critical common interest. Tomake the point precisely, it is worth quoting Bull’s position on the origins ofinternational society:

The maintenance of order in international society has as its starting pointthe development among states of a sense of common interests in theelementary goals of social life. However different and conflicting theirinterests may be, they are united in viewing these goals as instrumen-tal to them. Their sense of common interests may derive from fear ofunrestricted violence, of the instability of agreements or of the insecurityof their independence or sovereignty. It may have its origins in rationalcalculation that the willingness of states to accept restrictions on theirfreedom of action is reciprocal. Or it may be based also on the treatmentof these goals as valuable in themselves and not merely as a means toand end—it may express a sense of common values as well as of commoninterests.14

This is not a formal causal analysis, but a list of some of the possible nec-essary conditions for the emergence of a common interest.15 Despite theEnglish School’s long preoccupation with the question whether a sharedculture is a necessary condition for the emergence of an international soci-ety, Bull’s list above makes no reference to a common culture (although itdoes mention common values). Fear, uncertainty, and a common recogni-tion that if we do not cooperate minimally to secure our independence, wewill all perish lie as the bases of institutions, rules, and the common interestin system maintenance. Bull is clearly interested in origins, but he does notdwell on the issue.

Bull is more concerned with the endurance of order. As Rengger points out,‘for “international society” to be a “fact,” it must include norms, rules andprocedures that are not simply rules of thumb but which are able to createillocutionary and normative force.’16 The fear, common values, and otherconditions that help account for the rise of the essential common interestin the maintenance of the system must persist over time and must becomeembedded in the make-up of the states that comprise the system. Rationalchoice approaches that see cooperation arising from self-interested actiondo not adequately explain how cooperation eventually becomes rooted in anormative framework of permanent obligation. Bull in his most original andhighly developed move focuses on longevity and endurance rather than theorigins of international order. His stance is similar to that of his peers: noneof the realist theorists of his era puzzled over the origins of anarchy or ofstates, for example.

If Bull can be exonerated from the claim that he pays no attention toorigins of the common interest in maintaining the system and focusesinstead on the issue of maintaining the elements of order, the charge


K. J. Holsti 133

of underdevelopment is more valid when it comes to his conceptions ofrules and institutions. Both are critical sources of order, but Bull makesno systematic—analytical or historical—foray into their origins. He basi-cally ignores the issue, which leads to some inaccuracies. For example, heinsists that Chou China during the Warring States period (403–221 BC)and the Greek city states of the sixth and fifth centuries BC were interna-tional societies. However, neither of these ‘societies’ had developed notionsof sovereignty or exclusive territorial jurisdiction. The origins of institu-tions and rules are not the subject of historical explanation because ofBull’s preoccupation with how the rules and institutions of the states sys-tem contribute to order and how they are challenged in the contemporaryenvironment.

Bull’s project, throughout, is an invitation to further research; it is achallenge to others to add to or subtract from his theoretical framework andfor others to do the historical research on origins. I will say more on this inmy concluding comments. Here, it is sufficient to argue that methodologi-cally Bull’s work is reasonably clear within a limited domain. The constituentelements of order are specified and supported through the use of domesticanalogies. He then specifies some necessary conditions for the maintenanceor order and he interrogates the connection between them. His causal anal-ysis is consistent with his epistemological stance: causes and outcomes areusually put in a conditional language of ‘may’ instead of ‘is.’ He developspersuasive arguments to show how institutions may contribute to interna-tional order and how some current developments are compromising themain characteristics of some of the institutions. Substantively, more couldbe said on any of these issues, but it is not Bull’s intention to ‘lay downthe law’ (to use Vattel’s famous phrase)—a new hegemony for internationaltheory—but to offer suggestive explanations for a phenomenon in interna-tional politics that had been ignored in both the Hobbesian and the Kantianversions of the field.

There are, however, several areas where Bull’s writing leads to ambiguityand thus to misunderstanding. I will highlight three ‘mysteries’ in theAnarchical Society that arise from the lack of rigor in some of Bull’s definitionsand exegesis: (1) What is ‘international society,’ and what is its relationshipto the larger domain he terms ‘world society’? (2) What are internationalinstitutions? and (3) Where is history?

Mystery #1: what is international society?

For most of the commentaries of the English School, the notion of interna-tional society refers to a characterization of the essential characteristics ofinternational politics over a long period of time. It is thus a ‘fact’17 some-thing that can be observed, identified, and experienced. To Bull, it is alsoan ‘idea,’ and an ideal type; states will resemble the idea or ideal type to



the extent that they ‘think of themselves as constituting a society of thatkind.’18 It is both a social construction and something that the observer cananalyze. It is a shorthand characterization of some aspects of internationalpolitics, one that goes back to the insights of Grotius, Vattel, Heeren, andmany others.19 It has an intellectual history and continuity, which raises thequestion why Morgenthau, Waltz, and many others ignored it. While Bulltalks extensively about ‘international society,’ as he talks about states, bal-ances of power, and international law, it is clear from numerous statementsthat it is also a constantly changing variable. It has no fixed parameters suchas those found in the concept of ‘international system,’ or ‘power politics’in realist theory. Bull makes constant reference to the ‘elements’ of interna-tional order in international politics, stating clearly that these elements areonly part of international relations and that they vie against Hobbesian andKantian elements in constantly shifting proportions:

. . . [S]ociety is only one of a number of competing elements ininternational politics; indeed, the description of it as a society at all con-veys only part of the truth. An explanation of the rules and institutionsof international society that dealt only with the functions they serve inrelation to international society as a whole would overlook the extent towhich international politics is better described as a state of war or as apolitical field in which individuals and groups other than the state arethe principal actors.20

The elements of order in international society are thus variables that waxand wane, just as the Hobbesian and Kantian elements are. Bull offers nosystematic explanations regarding why and how the social elements grow instrength or decline, although in his discussion of alternative internationalsystems in Part III (‘Alternative Paths to World Order’) he offers some hints.Moreover, he says little about the boundaries between the various domains.21

Figure 6.2 offers a pictorial rendering Bull’s world view.The globe is the total system, which is comprised of various ‘elements,’

within three domains: the Hobbesian domain (war of all against all), thedomain of international society (the domain of rule-based practices andcommitment to the preservation of the system), and the Kantian domain(representing elements of ‘world society’ comprised of individuals andpossibly other non-state actors).22 The three domains expand or shrinkhistorically in a zero-sum way. If the Kantian domain expands, as seemsto be the case today, then it is, as Bull suggests, ‘subversive’ of the ele-ments of international society. Similarly, the Hobbesian elements, as duringWorld War II, grew rapidly at the expense of both the international societyand the Kantian elements. Figure 6.2 suggests a possible rendering of thisscheme, comparing 1702 (the eve of the War of the Spanish Succession),


K. J. Holsti 135

Hobbesianelements

Elements ofinternational

society

Kantianelements

Hobbesianelements

Elements of international society Kantianelements

Elements of World Society, circa 2008

Elements of World Society, circa 1702

Figure 6.2 Changing Elements of World Society, circa 1702 and 2008

with the contemporary situation. In the former, Hobbesian elements domi-nate, although there are elements of society as well as a limited (to Europe)world society represented by the position of the church and the culturalaffinity of ‘Christendom.’ Today, the Hobbesian element has declined per-ceptibly, as interstate war and conquest have become a rarity in internationalrelations, while the influence and weight of non-state actors and individu-als have impacted on critical elements of international society such as thedoctrine of non-intervention. Many of the contemporary debates about theadequacies of international theories revolve around this very question: towhat extent are we seeing the rise of a world society, and in what ways is itchallenging the ontological and theoretical primacy of state-centered con-ceptions of the world? The boundaries between the domains are constantlyin flux, although Bull is never very clear on how we might theorize aboutthe connections between the domains or the dynamics of movement.

What the figures do not illustrate is the duality (at a minimum) of theinternational society concept. Bull refers, simultaneously, to a ‘social reality’(e.g., pp. 123, 133), to an ‘idea,’ or concept, to a social construction, to a‘supreme normative principle’ (p. 137), and to variables in his causal scheme.There is nothing inherently wrong with multiple meanings, but Bull doesnot always make clear distinctions between them and, in particular, he offersno clues as to how, in his causal scheme, the variables can be rendered into



research design. The conflating of social reality with a supreme normativeprinciple also raises significant issues. It encourages Bull, for example, toargue implicitly that the is should also be the ought.

Mystery #2: what are international institutions?

Bull offers a definition of institutions, one that while vague in some respectsis certainly capable of pointing to empirical referents. He also distinguishesthem from international organizations, a distinction that many others failto make. Institutions, in Bull’s sense, are established patterns of action thatcontain normative elements and are sustained through tradition and culture.International institutions are akin to social arrangements such as marriage,universities, or business. We speak of each of these as an ‘institution’ ratherthan as an organization. Although he avoids a functional methodologyin his book—indeed he deliberately rejects it (pp. 72–73)—he insists thatinternational institutions have consequences for international order, or touse his term, they serve certain functions for that order (e.g., how doesdiplomacy contribute to international order? (p. 156). In general, they sus-tain the normative and rule-based elements of international politics, and, asin diplomacy, they symbolize the society of states. Bull is careful to point out,however, that these functions can be performed in ways other than thoseoffered through the institutions he selects. One could have, for example,a robust element of international society without professional diplomats:communication between states could be handled through other means, as isincreasingly the case today.

Bull’s institutions have the function of ‘protecting’ the essential rulesof coexistence between sovereign agents. But it is states that are the pre-mier and essential institution, as well as agents, of the society of states, forthey not only make the rules, but also communicate, administer, interpret,enforce, legitimize, alter, and protect them (pp. 68–71). An internationalsociety, as he has defined it, is unthinkable without states. They are thus thefoundational institution. The other institutions he examines contribute tointernational society and order, to be sure, but we have no way of knowingif his list is comprehensive, and in what ways institutions are comparativelyimportant or crucial. Bull seems to have an implicit hierarchy of institutions,with states and balances of power as essentials for the maintenance and func-tioning of the other institutions. Without the balance of power, the systemwould probably transform into a universal empire or a suzerainty system.The balance of power is a human contrivance, as opposed to many realisttheories which suggest it can be fortuitous, or an automatic tendency in anyinternational system. But one can raise the question whether the balance ofpower is critical to order and its constituent rules, for throughout historythere have been serious imbalances of power (as today) without a result-ing system transformation or a luxurious growth of the Hobbesian elements


K. J. Holsti 137

of international politics. Many states, rather than resisting potential hege-mons, have bandwagoned with them, leading to greater imbalances, and theso-called ‘balancers’ have often failed to balance. Bull does not consider thepossibility that imbalances of power may contribute to international orderas well. So while, after states, balance of power may be the most critical insti-tution in his list, he pays little attention to the problems that the conceptraises for theoretical inquiry.

Bull also lists the great powers as an institution. This raises numerousissues, not the least of which is that analysts seldom agree on its roster.The great powers have selected themselves in some key historical moments(as prior to the Congress of Vienna), but the hierarchy has seldom stuck.Moreover, in discussing the contribution the great powers make to inter-national order (pp. 199–220), Bull skips over the well-known fact that thegreat powers have been more war-prone than any other category of state.While they have occasionally used armed force to maintain a balance ofpower, to enforce international law, or to punish lesser power violence, onecan certainly make the case that they have been the source of more inter-national instability, crises, and outright war than other states.23 Indeed, itis often the smaller states rather than the great powers that are the maindefenders of international law and multilateral institutions. In the contem-porary environment, it has been the lesser states of the world that havejoined together to create international regimes (e.g., the land mines ban),led and sustained international peace-keeping efforts, protested violationsof international law (such as the no-fly zones in Iraq), and devoted largerproportional sums to major development schemes and relief programs. Bullinsists that one hallmark of an institution is ‘patterned activity,’ but in thecase of the great powers, their activities have ranged from massive genocidesto passive withdrawals from international politics. There is little pattern totheir behavior. In my opinion, great power refers to a particular status ininternational relations, not to an institution as Bull has defined it.

There is little basis for arguing that Bull’s choice of the remaininginstitutions is off the mark. International law, war (in some respects), anddiplomacy are certainly the key elements of the Grotian view of interna-tional society. However, what about other institutions such as territoriality(not discussed by Bull), or the global market?24 In brief, Bull’s methodologydoes not include the selection criteria for choice of institutions and one keyinstitution—the state—receives only slim treatment compared to the others.

A further problem arising from the lack of explicit selection criteria isthat Bull’s choices load the dice in favor of institutions that promoteinternational order. His selection of war may seem to contradict this obser-vation, but Bull does at least strive to discriminate between types of warsand their consequences. The use of organized violence to enforce soci-ety norms, as in the case of collective military sanctions, offers numerousexamples. But what of less order-promoting activities? Bull’s definition of



institutions is rather vague—‘habits and practices shaped toward the realiza-tion of common goals’ (p. 71)—allowing for an extraordinarily wide rangeof possibilities. Among them could be the practice of piracy which was insome cases organized and abetted by states and the governors of the Barbarypolities in the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. Bull also excludestransnational non-state bodies whose activities are patterned and suffusedwith norms and ideas dedicated toward common goals. International drugtrade would be included in this category.

There is probably no authoritative solution to the problem of selection cri-teria. Bull implicitly suggests that states and balances of power are essentialto the functioning of other institutions, but he offers no clues as to why thisshould always be the case. In my own work, I have distinguished between‘foundational’ institutions, such as the state, territoriality, sovereignty, andinternational law and ‘process’ institutions, such as diplomacy and trade.This is not the place to offer a justification for this categorization, but wecan go through a counter-factual imagining and try to see if something akinto an international society and its defining characteristic of order wouldbe possible in a domain of non-sovereign agents, having no conceptionof territoriality, and abjuring all efforts to create analogies to internationallaw. Despite some globalists who see the burgeoning realm of transnationalprivate activities as taking place at the expense of states, it is the sovereignterritorial state that remains the sole locus and source of authority in inter-national politics. Authority is not the same as power or influence, but it isan essential attribute of order, one that Bull does not adequately consider.There could be any number of process institutions in international society,but my list of the foundational ones is exhaustive and sufficient in a waythat Bull’s is not.

Finally, I reiterate the point that The Anarchical Society is mostly muteon the origins of and changes in institutions. When, how, and why didthese institutions arise? Have all the institutions survived? Which ones havebecome obsolete and why? Are there nascent institutions emerging in thecontemporary society of states? This criticism is not entirely fair, for Bullvery carefully sets out the questions he wishes to explore in relation to eachinstitution. His fundamental concern is to outline the roles and functionshis selected institutions play in sustaining order, and the status of theseinstitutions at the time he wrote his treatise. Bull is concerned with the prob-lem of change in institutions in the 1970s, but not in a systematic way. Histreatment of change is context-dependent, not generic.

Mystery #3: where is history?

Bull was highly critical of the scientific or behavioral approach to the studyof international politics, in part because in his opinion the studies extant atthe time he wrote were a-historical.25 The Anarchical Society is replete with


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history; Bull’s familiarity with some crucial developments in internationalpolitics is fully on display. However, aside from historical illustrations aboutthe status of various international institutions, Bull in The Anarchical Societyis mostly interested in the history of thought about international relations.26

Some of the forefathers of the concept of international society—Grotius, deCallieres, Vattel, Heeren—and many others are brought into the discussion.The whole idea of Europe as a single ‘Republic,’ bound not just by propin-quity, but also by religion, culture, history, economics ties, and the arts,fills the pages of most of the continent’s great thinkers. Aside from thoseBull mentions, we would have to add Rousseau, Kant, Gentz, Fenelon, andMontesqieue.27 Bull and his colleagues on the British Committee on theStudy of International Theory did not inaugurate a new theory of interna-tional politics, but resurrected European thinkers of the seventeenth throughnineteenth centuries, these central figures who were concerned like Bullabout international order and the problem of hegemony. For many gradu-ates of American PhD programs in the 1960s until even today, the originatorsof the idea of a society of states must seem of antiquarian interest only, butthey are central to the background tradition of the English School. Bull’s con-tribution, in this regard, is to demonstrate the continuity of thinking and tobuttress his claim that the study of international relations bereft of histori-cal knowledge, particularly of intellectual history, deprives the investigatorof the means of self-criticism, and in consequence leads him or her to have aview of the subject and its possibilities ‘that is callow and brash.’28 Through-out The Anarchical Society Bull appropriately pays homage to his intellectualpredecessors.

It is in connection with Bull’s discussion of ‘Alternative Paths to WorldOrder’ that the mystery of his use of history comes to the fore. Hisalternatives, ranging from a disarmed world to world government, containno discussion of the actual historical record of alternatives, the mostcommon of which has been the search for hegemony.

While Bull emphasized the ‘dark side’ of politics within the society ofstates—the persistence of Hobbesian elements—he did not acknowledgethat a major source of the Hobbesian element may be the conflicts andwars fought over competing visions of order within a single society of states.The alternative to the society of states may not be the victory of theHobbesian element (or the Kantian element, for that matter) or the alter-natives he outlines in Chapter 10, but rather an international order thatsustains or incorporates the three essential elements under an entirelydifferent distribution of power, buttressed by different ideologies, norms,and institutions, but still consistent with his concept of order.

If we look at the greatest threats to the international system over the lastfour centuries, they have all come from actors that had different visionsof how an international order ought to be organized. Hitler’s ‘New Order’



does not qualify as an alternative because it was based on a racial hierar-chy enforced by terror, theft, and war, and is thus inherently incompatiblewith Bull’s notion of order. Note also that it was a war of one against allothers, and not all against all in the Hobbesian image. The remaining con-tenders’ images all meet the three essential requirements of order specifiedby Bull, but the configuration of power was essentially different, as were theideologies and rules under which the system would operate.

For European opponents of Napoleon, the French emperor personified thethreat of ‘universal monarchy’ that had so preoccupied analysts of diplo-macy ever since the Thirty Year’s War. He set out to reconfigure the mapof Europe, establishing satrapies and fictional states wherever the GrandeArmee ‘liberated’ populations from the yoke of monarchical despotism.Napoleon established an empire (1804–1814) in name, but not in fact. Pro-vided that the other European states accepted French supremacy, they wereable to maintain the essentials of sovereignty. They remained states withina European system of states, they exchanged ambassadors, they entered intotreaty relations with each other, and they maintained their own militaryforces. France annexed considerable territory from the victims of its con-quests, but unlike the ancient Chinese states during the Chou era, Napoleondid not ‘extinguish’ most of those whom he defeated. Prussia, Austria,Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Spain (with Napoleon’s brother as king)continued as ostensible sovereign states. Only some of the territories inItaly became parallels of foreign provinces in the Roman Empire. In theNapoleonic order, France was the suzerain or hegemon, justifying its superiorposition on its liberal and revolutionary ideology. This was a system of orderwithin an international society characterized by the hegemony of a singlepower.

The next great competitor of order came after the Bolshevik victory in1917. The Communist vision of an alternative world order was never out-lined in great detail, but there is no evidence that states as such were tobe eliminated in favor of a Russian constructed, centralized empire. HadBolshevik-inspired revolutions in the aftermath of World War I in Germany,Finland, Hungary, and elsewhere been victorious, it is doubtful that the newregimes would have liquidated themselves and their countries to be ruledby apparatchiks from Moscow. Even in the heyday of Stalin’s rule, the com-munist countries of central and east Europe maintained all the symbols andappurtenances of sovereignty. The Soviet bloc closely resembled a suzerainsystem because Moscow held a veto on most of the lesser members’ foreignand domestic policy decisions, but it was never centralized in the way thatRome or Hitler’s system of gauleiters were. The Soviet order was sustained bythe Marxist–Leninist ideology, military force, bonds between its members’party leaders, and the development of a concept of socialist international lawwhich was proclaimed to be superior to imperialist international legal prin-ciples. ‘Socialist internationalism’ was the underlying normative structure


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that prescribed the rules and norms appropriate for inter-socialist state rela-tions. The order had its own institutions and etiquette quite distinct fromthe universal ones outlined by Bull.

The contemporary international system constitutes a third addition to thelist of alternatives to the international society portrayed by Bull. There hasbeen much loose talk and writing about an American empire, but mostof it is in the vein of political rhetoric rather than serious analysis. Noempire in history has formally recognized the sovereignty of states withinits ambit. To speak of empire and sovereignty in the same breath is an oxy-moron. Technically, the United States does not present a threat analogousto the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century concept of ‘universal monar-chy.’ However, it certainly does not see its contemporary role as that of justanother great power within a balance of power system. The United Statesis firmly committed to the world plan of societies incorporated into sep-arate sovereign jurisdictions. It is also committed to the promotion andsustenance of norms, rules, and institutions that would allow us to charac-terize the contemporary system as an ‘international society’ in Bull’s sense,that is, as a collectivity of sovereign states where there is a predominantcommon interest in its preservation and in the rules that incorporate Bull’sfamous trinity defining the basis of all societies. In the conception of GeorgeW. Bush’s first administration, the United States can provide security forthe entire international society, provided that its members support otherAmerican priorities. Where American foreign policy diverges from Bull’s con-cept of international society is in its insistence that it is not itself boundby the rules of that society and, as in a Hobbesian space, its security andother interests take primacy over all other concerns. This is not the placeto review the record of exceptionalism in the Bush administration’s foreignpolicy pronouncements and actions, but a few highlights of this view can belisted:

1 Strong promotion of the prosecution of war criminals, but at the sametime retracting the American signature to the treaty incorporating theInternational Criminal Court.

2 American insistence that the states of the world sign the ComprehensiveNuclear Test Ban Treaty, but refuses to sign it itself.

3 A strong program of attempting to halt the spread of nuclear weaponswhile itself developing new nuclear weapons and insisting on the right todo so.

4 Announcing a ‘right’ to attack any target ‘suspected’ of attempting toobtain weapons of mass destruction, while helping to provide suchweapons for selected allies such as India.

5 Repeated statements that while others (except Israel) should refrain fromusing force to defend or achieve foreign policy objectives, the UnitedStates will unilaterally decide for itself when and if it should use military



force. The international community has and cannot have any veto oversuch decisions.

6 The United States promotes free trade, but when the WTO or NAFTA makedecisions that counter American interests, the United States will decideunilaterally whether or not to accept those decisions.

7 The United States promotes the development of democracy abroad,but when popular elections put into office governments that challengeAmerican interests, the United States will resort to subversion, assassina-tion, and armed intervention to overthrow those governments. Iran in1952, Guatemala in 1954, the Congo in 1961, Chile in 1972, and Hamasin Palestine today, to mention just the most prominent, have been therecipients of this kind of American attention.

8 The United States will place weapons into space, thus assuring its mil-itary supremacy for the foreseeable future and, coincidentally, violatinganother international norm, the demilitarized status of outer space asnoted in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.

The philosophical underpinnings of contemporary American foreign pol-icy reflect a Hobbesian view of the international community and America’srole in it. While in practice in the past several years, elements of coopera-tive diplomacy have reappeared—Bush, Rice, and their cohorts have learnedthat the United States is not all-powerful and that collaboration is some-times necessary—the essential administration view of the world is that ofa dangerous place where others are constantly plotting to harm the UnitedStates which is, of course, innocent of damaging threats to others exceptthose justified as self-defense. American rhetoric may appeal to the values ofliberalism, human rights, and democracy, but that lexicon does not includeany obligation to observe the rules of the international society as Bull hasdefined them. The Bush administration’s underlying image of American pre-dominance thus contains a strange mix of Bull’s elements of order. It hasa vision of an American-led world order, but its outlines appear in none ofBull’s discussions of ‘alternatives to world order.’ The United States seeks topreserve and protect the society of states on one hand, but on the other,it arrogates for itself a right to ignore or violate the rules and institutionsthat sustain that society. It formally supports the notion of sovereign equal-ity, but claims that it has an obligation to bring liberty to those who donot enjoy it and to do so by violating the sovereignty of the target states.It tolerates no external intrusion into its constitutional sphere [sovereignty],but insists on a right to intrude into those of others. Condoleeza Rice hastermed the idea of an international community—a synonym for interna-tional society—as a ‘myth,’ but insists that such a community support theUnited States in its various endeavors around the world, in particular the‘war on terror.’ Its military doctrines unabashedly claim the intention ofmaintaining supremacy against all other states or combination of them. It


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is, in brief, a hegemon, above or beyond the reach of the rules of the societyof states, but nevertheless committed to the perpetuation of that society.

The final example that does not fit in any of Bull’s categories of alternativesto international society is the vision of the heaven on earth under a univer-sal Islamic regime. This is an order that is incompatible with internationalsociety. The most fundamental assumption or norm underlying Bull’s con-cept of international society is tolerance of social, economic, and religiousdifference. But in the extreme Islamic view, there is only one community ofthe righteous and in this community there is no room for infidels, whetherHindus, Buddhists, ‘crusaders,’ or others. Bull might categorize such a worldunder his concept of ‘ideological homogeneity’ (pp. 235–240), but in hisdiscussion of this alternative, he sees it only as a (slight) possibility within asystem of states.

In brief, Bull did not use the historical record to come up withhis alternatives to the present international society. His alternatives arehypothetical and abstract, and most serve as easy targets for devastatingcriticism, of which he offers more than one example in his substantivediscussion. It remains a mystery why Bull, with his deep knowledge of thehistorical record, missed the most obvious candidates for alternatives andends up mostly with a series of straw men.

The Bull legacy

Hedley Bull did not set out a formal ‘scientific’ account of his method-ology, nor did he propose to offer a full characterization of internationalpolitics, a la Moregenthau or Waltz. This is a point Bull’s critics often miss.He did not seek to create a theory of international politics, but only of orderwithin it. Bull is meticulous in outlining his theoretical agenda. He clearlyestablishes a causal model, he roughly hypothesizes connections betweenvariables, and he acknowledges that while he can specify necessary andsufficient conditions in some cases, he welcomes others to try their handat their own explanations. The Anarchical Society echoes Bull’s epistemolog-ical position, which is that in the social realm knowledge is uncertain. Hecarries though his own work his conviction that ‘if we confine ourselvesto strict standards of verification and proof there is very little of signifi-cance that can be said about international relations.’29 Bull’s phraseologyis cautious throughout, reflecting his view that ‘general propositions [aboutinternational politics] must . . . derive from a scientifically imperfect processof perception or intuition, and . . . . cannot be accorded anything more thanthe tentative and inconclusive status appropriate to their doubtful origins.’30

We should not therefore expect Bull’s variables to be carefully operational-ized, systematic data supporting his main hypothesized causal relationshipsto be displayed in lengthy charts, and his hypotheses to be rendered intoa falsifiable form, to be replicated by others (which social scientists of the



most hard-nosed methodological persuasion seldom do themselves). Bullviews his theoretical enterprise as an open-ended analytical approach tocertain aspects of the domain called international politics. Unlike mostrealist theories, it is not a closed system.

Nevertheless, methodology is clearly not missing in Bull’s work. The Anar-chical Society contains both constitutive and causal analysis, variables arefor the most part identified and specified, and the outcome (order) takesa precisely configured central space in the analysis. Some of the hypoth-esized relationships must necessarily be couched in conditional language,and not all variables can be neatly operationalized into formal scientificformats. How, for example, could one approach the question ‘does the bal-ance of power contribute to international order?’ in a formal manner? It isnotable that dozens of quantitative analyses of this question have come uponly with contradictory answers.31 Clearly specified rules of evidence do notnecessarily lead to unambiguous outcomes. Bull’s narrative-like analysis ofthis question seems as enlightening to the reader as do dozens of formalquantitative studies. Bull does not make a fetish of methodology, but hedoes not ignore it either. Methodology is built into the analysis but does notcommand it.

I have listed a few of the problems or mysteries in Bull’s great treatise, butthis is not to denigrate the value of the whole. Even with some method-ological flaws, Bull’s work stands out because it has inspired others to gobeyond. I dispute Martin Shaw’s claim that The Anarchical Society representsan encapsulation of Cold War ideology or Nicholas Rengger’s assertion thatBull’s theory of international society is ‘incoherent.’32 Few would bother togo beyond Bull if it were. We cannot criticize Bull for having failed to domore than he intended. Bull’s work is not a general theory of internationalpolitics, and his normative position that under contemporary circumstancesa strengthened element of society in international politics is probably thebest we can hope for, even if it is often against the interests of justice, isdefensible.33

The key is in the durability of Bull’s explanation of international order.One can read The Anarchical Society today and benefit from most of it. Ithas worn well. It is a partial theory of international politics that has suc-cessfully transcended time, place, and personality. Most important, unlikemany theoretical works in the field, it has stimulated others to explore issuesand problems raised but not resolved by Bull. Buzan’s exploration of theissue of boundaries between the Kantian and international society domainsis one prominent example.34 Without Bull’s previous work, it is unlikelythat Buzan and Little’s magisterial historical account of international sys-tems and other societies of states would have appeared.35 My own Tamingthe Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (2004) is deeplyindebted to Bull’s insights as well as to some of his shortcomings in deal-ing with the problem of institutions. Bull’s normative position has helped


K. J. Holsti 145

spawn a lively debate between the so-called ‘pluralists’ and ‘communitari-ans’. And despite the common complaint that the English School in generalhas been indifferent to methodological rigour, Bull’s work, combined withconstructivist theory, has inspired a new wave of empirically based researchon interstate conflict and zones of peace.36

However, Bull’s work has not spawned as much empirical research as onemight wish. Debates founded upon many of his distinctions have revolvedprimarily around the pluralist versus communitarian issues but there arenumerous substantive and methodological issues arising from his essay thatremain to be examined. For example, what about a systematic, historicalaccount of the waxing and waning of the social elements of internationalpolitics over time? Why not explore the links between institutions andrules, or vice-versa? How do we explain over time the dynamic movementsand assaults between the Hobbesian, Grotian, and Kantian elements in theinternational system.37 A perennial question raised but seldom exploredempirically is when systems of states become international societies.38 Onlyone case study39 has explored the issue in detail, but much more can andshould be done. Bull’s work has been the subject of considerable critique, butone can make the case that now it is the time to get on with the research.We do not need more of the endless squabbles about ‘schools,’ concepts, andapproaches. Bull had his shortcomings, to be sure, but without his work,methodological warts and all, the term ‘the English School’ would havereceded into the dim mists of the largely forgotten history of our commonendeavor.


1. Nicholas Onuf, A World of Our Making (Columbia, SC: University of South Car-olina Press, 1989); Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International Society(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996); Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink,Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 1998).

2. Martha Finnemore, ‘Exporting the English School?’, Review of International Studies,27 (2001), 509–513.

3. In the text that follows, all page references are to Hedley Bull, The AnarchicalSociety: A Study of Order in World Politics. 3rd edn (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 2002). For these statements by Bull, see pp. 34 and 26, respectively.

4. Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’ in KlausKnorr and James N. Rosenau (eds), Contending Approaches to International Politics(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 26.

5. Finnemore, ‘Exporting the English School?’, p. 509.6. Timothy Dunne, ‘International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?’, Cooper-

ation and Conflict, 30 (1995), p. 131; N. J Rengger, ‘The City Which Sustains AllThings? Communitarianism and International Society’ in Rick Fawn and JeremyLarkins (eds) International Society After the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered(London: Macmillan, and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 63 and 66–67.



7. Ole Waever, ‘Europe’s Three Empires’, in Fawn and Larkins (eds) InternationalSociety After the Cold War, p. 223.

8. K. J. Holsti, ‘Hindrances to Understanding in International Relations,’ in Jose V.Ciprut (ed.) The Art of the Feud: Reconceptualizing International Relations (Westport,CT and London: Praeger, 2000), pp. 31–34.

9. Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley,1979).

10. A recent example is Georg Sørensen, ‘What Kind of World Order? The Inter-national System in the New Millennium’, Cooperation and Conflict 4 (2006),343–363.

11. Cf., Roland Bleiker, ‘Order and Disorder in World Politics,’ in Alex J. Bellamy (ed.)International Society and its Critics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); AndrewLinklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations:A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),pp. 58–59.

12. Cf., Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 78.

13. Cf., Hidemi Suganami, ‘The English School and International Theory’, in Alex J.Bellamy (ed.), International Society and its Critics, p. 34.

14. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 34.15. Strangely, Bull did not include in his list the processes of mimicry. The history

of international politics is filled with examples of one government imitating thepractices of another because of various perceived advantages. The institution ofthe permanent embassy spread throughout Europe primarily in a copy-cat fash-ion, often because of concerns of status and prestige. See K. J. Holsti, Tamingthe Sovereigns: Institutional Change in International Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004), Ch. 6.

16. N. J. Rengger, ‘The City Which Sustains All Things?’, p. 72.17. Ibid., pp. 69–72.18. Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations, p. 53.19. Cf., Dunne, ‘International Society: Theoretical Promises Fulfilled?’, p. 136.20. Bull, The Anarchical Society, pp. 72–73.21. Cf., Timothy Dunne, ‘The New Agenda’, in Alex J. Bellamy (ed.) International

Society and its Critics, p. 73.22. Cf., Barry Buzan, ‘International Society and International Security’, in Fawn and

Larkins (eds), International Society After the Cold War, pp. 261–262.23. In his later discussion of the great powers, Bull acknowledges that they ‘frequently

behave in such a way as to promote disorder rather than order, they seek to upsetthe general balance, rather than to preserve it, to foment crises rather than tocontrol them, to win wars rather than to limit them, and so on’ (p. 201). Indeed,Bull was so concerned with the policies of the ‘new’ Cold War in the years of theReagan administration, that he was stimulated to write his famous denunciationof the Soviet Union and the United States as the ‘Great Irresponsibles.’ See HedleyBull, ‘The Great Irresponsibles? The United States, the Soviet Union, and WorldOrder,’ International Journal, 35 (1980) pp. 437–447.

24. Cf., Barry Buzan, From International to World Society: English School Theory and theSocial Structure of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

25. Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach,’ p. 37.26. The comments that follow refer solely to Bull’s use of history in The Anar-

chical Society. They do not cover Bull’s general views on the role of historical


K. J. Holsti 147

studies in the study of International Relations. For discussion of the latter prob-lem, consult Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations:A Contemporary Reassessment.

27. The concept of an international society is succinctly paraphrased in the followingstatement by Gentz, written in the early nineteenth century:‘An extensive social union was formed among the states [of Europe], of whichthe essential and characteristic aim was the preservation and mutual guarantee ofthe well-won rights of each of its members . . . . Men became aware that there werecertain basic rules in the relationship between the strength of each individual partand the whole, without whose constant influence order could not be assured.’Quoted in Chris Brown, Terry Nardin, and Nicholas Rengger (eds) InternationalRelations in Political Thought: Texts from the Ancient Greeks to the First World War(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 309.

28. Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach,’ p. 37.29. Ibid., p. 20.30. Ibid.31. For a summary of the inconsistent findings relating balance of power to war, see

K. J. Holsti, ‘The Decline of Interstate War: Pondering Systemic Explanations,’ inRaimo Vayrynen (ed.) The Waning of Major War: Theories and Debates (Abingdon,Oxon, and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 146–51.

32. See, respectively, Martin Shaw, ‘Global Society and Global Responsibility: TheTheoretical, Historical and Political Limits of “International Society” ,’ in Fawnand Larkins (eds) International Society After the Cold War, p. 49; and N. J. Reng-ger, ‘The City Which Sustains All Things?’, in Fawn and Larkins (eds) InternationalSociety After the Cold War, p. 63.

33. Cf., Robert H. Jackson. The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

34. Buzan, From International to World Society.35. Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the

Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).36. Cf., Arie M. Kacowicz, The Impact of Norms in International Society: The Latin

American Experience (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).37. Cf., Finnemore, ‘Exporting the English School?’, p. 513.38. Cf., Linklater and Suganami, The English School of International Relations, p. 124.39. Yannis Stivachtis, The Enlargement of International Society: Culture versus Anarchy

and Greece’s Entry into International Society (London: Macmillan, 1998).


7The English School and the Activityof Being an Historian1

William Bain

History enjoys pride of place in English School thought, not only becausesome of its founding members, Martin Wight and Herbert Butterfield inparticular, were trained historians. It is also the only kind of knowledge torival the authority of science in the field of international relations, althoughthe commerce between historians and international relations is often ten-uous and sparse.2 It was Wight who looked to history in order to shinelight on ‘violets’—the potent principles of Grotius’ thought—which werehidden beneath the ‘gigantic rhododendrons’ of arguments forgotten longago.3 Wight conceived the good historian as one who possesses the imagi-nation to enter into the past, to understand the minds of individuals andthe societies in which they live because ‘events have also their insides, thepurposes and passions which shaped them’. He professed agreement withFrederic William Maitland’s view of history as consisting in something morethan a rehearsal of the things people have done: ‘history is the history ofideas’.4 Butterfield too stressed the importance of getting inside history—toavoid the fallacy that goes with reading history backwards in order to rat-ify the glory or righteousness of a present state of things. Failing that, heobserved, we shall find ourselves entirely cut off from one another as ‘allgenerations must be regarded as a world and a law unto themselves’.5

But if it is clear that English School theorists take history seriously, theirpurpose for doing so is a great deal less so. Once we have gotten inside his-tory and have allowed our imagination to roam freely, we are still left toask: What is historical knowledge for? Butterfield, Wight, and Bull all rejecta mechanistic view of history that lends itself to the prediction of futureevents; and yet they tend to coalesce around a poorly articulated view thatthe idiosyncrasies of history bear instructive knowledge which illuminatestimely questions of contemporary international relations. The purpose ofthis chapter is to explore what English School theorists claim for history andwhat they mean to achieve in making historical knowledge a central part oftheir scholarship. I shall proceed by first examining the writings of HedleyBull and Herbert Butterfield, which, taken together, provide an idealised

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though coherent distillation of the place historical inquiry enjoys in EnglishSchool theory.6 I then turn to Michael Oakeshott’s conception of history asfable to address limitations in their positions while sympathetically engag-ing the English School’s contention that historical knowledge is importantin understanding international relations.7 I shall conclude by reaffirming theplace English School theorists give to historically informed theory by, para-doxically, denying to history any didactic character or practical relevance.For it will become evident that a didactic history—and whatever lessons ithas to offer—is an illusion made in the present for the present, which isneither historical nor instructive.

History as speculation

In a manifesto denouncing what he described as the ‘scientific approach’ totheorising international relations, Hedley Bull suggested that tightly framedhypotheses, strictly defined procedures of verification, and a rigorouslyapplied course of empirical testing were likely to contribute ‘very little’ toa theory of international relations. Indeed, he went so far as to describe suchan approach as a ‘retrograde development’ that was ‘positively harmful’ towhat might be otherwise achieved in studying international relations.8 Indisavowing mathematical proofs, a priori assumptions, and logical extrap-olations, he also disavowed the pretension of a cumulative knowledge onwhich to build a truly scientific theory of international relations. Instead, heembraced a ‘classical approach’ to theorising that derived from ‘philosophy,history, and law, and which relies explicitly upon the exercise of judgment’.9

Of the three, it was history that was the main focus of his attention. Goodhistory is informed by theoretical considerations, he argued, and good the-oretical work is informed by history.10 Questions of international relationscould not be answered by consulting history alone, for the theoretical enter-prise amounted to something more than merely interpreting historical facts.Rather, Bull viewed history as a necessary, as opposed to a sufficient, con-dition of scholarly inquiry. It is in the world of history that we obtain afeel for the character of particular events that disclose something uniquelytheir own. It is in the context of history that international relations must beunderstood, not as a mere point in time that has been arrested in abstracttheoretical postulates, but as a ‘temporal sequence of events’ that are theproduct of historical interpretation. And it is history that provides the ‘labo-ratory of the social sciences’ in which general propositions are tested andthereby verified or falsified. Indeed, the necessary relation between his-tory and theory led Bull to conclude that ‘historical study is the essentialcompanion of theoretical study itself’.11

Essential though history might be to the theoretical enterprise, thereis a certain ambiguity in Bull’s argument. On the one hand, he arguesthat historical generalisations, for example generalisations about patterns


150 The English School and the Activity of Being an Historian

of international order, supply us with valuable knowledge. On the otherhand, he argues that historical generalisations are not enough because thereis something about events that are unique and therefore cannot be explainedin general propositions. Bull attempts to escape this paradox by seeing theinternational relations theorist as studying history to illuminate issues ofcontemporary world affairs while the international historian studies historyfor its own sake, perhaps for no other reason than sheer curiosity. But Lin-klater and Suganami see this answer as incurring further ambiguity, for itbegs a question of crucial importance: How does historical knowledge illu-minate contemporary world affairs?12 They readily concede that historicalknowledge provides the background to events in the present, or perhapswhat might be described as the context in which these events take place.However, theorists of international relations, members of the English Schoolbeing no exception, tend to claim more for history than the provision ofcontext. History, it is often said, can be made to yield lessons so that wemight avoid repeating the mistakes of the past—‘fighting the last war’, ‘suc-cumbing to the hubris of power’, or ‘failing to appreciate the reality of thehuman condition’.

But Bull is also ambiguous about a didactic conception of history. We canbe reasonably sure that he did not mean to illuminate contemporary eventsby scouring history for general laws according to which things are structuredor moved: his attachment to the classical approach rules out such a view ofhistory. Indeed, he never abandoned the idea that the study of internationalrelations should be partly idiographic in orientation because he regardedevents as imparting something peculiar unto themselves that could not begathered in regularised patterns.13 Linklater and Suganami attempt to makesense of this ambiguity by suggesting another possibility, namely that his-torical knowledge may be useful, not in predicting future events, but, forexample, in guiding our speculative views about what international societymight look like in the future.14 It is then possible to make sense of both Bull’scommitment to and scepticism of historically grounded research: whereashistorical knowledge is an essential part of the theoretical enterprise, thepeculiarity of particular events constrain what history can tell us. Linklaterand Suganami describe this paradoxical position as pointing to what Bullunderstood as the concurrent range and limit of historical inquiry: ‘[h]istorymay be an indispensable guide to our speculation, but our speculation mayfail precisely because it has to be guided by history’.15

I want to contest Bull’s position, not because Linklater and Suganamiare mistaken in their interpretation, but because of the incoherence itimparts. The ambiguity in Bull’s argument is not removed by substitutingthe uncertainty that goes with speculation for the rather more demandingexpectations that go with prediction; nor does it answer the difficulty inderiving general propositions from singular events, events he admitted can-not be fully explained to the extent that they are truly singular.16 In fact,


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both approaches to history, the speculative type Bull embraced as well asthe predictive kind he rejected, appear to share more in common than heotherwise allows. This similarity is found in recalling the different purposesBull ascribes to the study of international history as against internationalrelations: whereas a study of an event undertaken for its own sake belongsto the student of international history, a study of the same event undertaken‘in order to throw light on contemporary interstate politics’ belongs to thestudent of international relations.17 In other words, speculative and predic-tive approaches to history may indeed be different but their purpose is oneand the same: to provide useful knowledge about present events.

Also unclear is what the international relations theorist is to do withthis useful knowledge, especially since the fully detached scholar, movedby nothing but genuine curiosity, belongs to the history rather than theinternational politics department. This question is all the more importantbecause English School theorists tend to view history as providing an unre-liable guide for political action; otherwise, we would be well advised tocede the day-to-day affairs of political life to those who submit the mosthighly rated returns to the history RAE panel.18 Linklater and Suganamiargue that Bull viewed history as providing a basis on which to comparepast and present, so that it was possible to speculate about a changing inter-national society, the future shape of which was nonetheless still somethingof a Rumsfeldian ‘known unknown’. In other words, historical knowledgeenabled him to offer (speculative) insights that no mathematical model orlogical deduction could provide, such as, for example, the extent to whichthe states system was beginning to look like a ‘secular reincarnation’ ofmediaeval Christendom.19 Thus, history is useful, not because it can tell uswhat will happen, but because it can tell us about possibilities that may (ormay not) happen.

But the notion of history as providing a speculative guide to the future isunsettled by uncertainty as to the character of historical knowledge itself.Bull sees history as providing the basis for comparison between past andpresent, which in turn is useful to the extent it throws light on contem-porary events; and he sees international relations as a ‘temporal sequence’of past events organised in terms of an ‘intellectual structure of hypothe-sis and argument’ that is the imposition of the historian.20 The question,then, turns on what part of historical knowledge is actually the past—something that happened and which is independent of the historian—andwhat part is the present—something that reflects the experience of the his-torian who writes and therefore produces history. Bull’s position seems toinvite an interpretation, according to which history is a type of presentknowledge that is made by the historian; and yet he clings to the propo-sition that history is a repository of (past) events that furnishes cases againstwhich (present) generalisations are tested.21 But this sequence of past eventsmight not be what ‘really’ happened or ‘all’ that happened; instead, it might



be merely a story composed of events that is complete and coherent asa story, but which cannot stand for a complete and coherent account ofhistory as such. Thus, Bull’s conception of history provides a rather precar-ious guide to understanding present events, not because their idiographiccharacter is greater than that we can comprehend, but because it entails acomparison of two kinds of present experience—a (present) history of pastevents and a (present) speculation on future events.

History as interim knowledge

The confusion in Bull’s position is illuminated further by examining HerbertButterfield’s writings on history. Butterfield begins by identifying ‘proper’historical writing with an imaginative and sympathetic understanding ofthe past, whereby the historian must endeavour to understand their ideas,their desires, and their ways of life, not because it ratifies (or condemns)the present, but because it makes the nearest approach to truth. Indeed,Butterfield argues that the ‘historical imagination comes to its sublimestachievements when it can succeed in comprehending the people not like-minded with oneself’.22 No privilege is given; no winner is anointed. Rather,the historian must labour to ‘understand the past for the sake of the past’,which involves as well accepting—though not endorsing—that ‘their gener-ation was as valid as our generation, their issues as momentous as our issuesand their day as full and as vital to them as our day is to us’.23 Butterfielddistinguished this kind of ‘academic’ history from a ‘contemporary’ style ofhistory that reveals itself in a Heroic narrative in which the past is made tospeak at the tribunal of the present. The contemporary historian providesa God’s-eye view of human achievement: daring exploits are distinguishedfrom ignominious failures, saviours are commemorated and villains con-demned, and battle lines are drawn so that history itself can give a verdict onthe course of events. In other words, the contemporary historian is interestedin separating ‘the sheep from the goats’ while chronicling an epic contestbetween right and wrong.24

The idiom of contemporary history is known well enough, if only becauseit is the most common way of introducing the past into popular discourse.With the insights of contemporary history at hand, history itself is placedsecurely at one’s side so that the wisdom of ‘our’ policy is vindicated and thefolly of ‘their’ policy is laid bare. It is then possible to gaze into the past andridicule the foolishness of Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to secure ‘peacein our time’. Thumb through a few pages and we can revel in the triumphof a righteous democracy over a wicked Marxist collectivism. And the lat-est and still unfolding chapter in this form of epic is known well enough,especially to those who see the ashes of the ‘evil empire’ as vindicating thetruth of a particular kind of (universal) freedom; so today we can marchinto battle assured, as George W. Bush reminds us with metronome-like


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regularity, that ‘[t]hose who place their hope in freedom may be attackedand challenged, but they will not ultimately disappointed, because free-dom is the design of humanity and freedom is the direction of history’.25

Of course, this kind of history is the stuff of pundits, arm-chair generals,and enthusiasts who breezily pass judgements on Oliver Cromwell’s ‘fanati-cism’, Woodrow Wilson’s ‘naivete’, and Bernard Montgomery’s ‘stupidity’in the field, all the while making the world a great deal simpler than itreally is.

Butterfield saw in ‘contemporary’ history a danger that typically goeshand-in-hand with the enterprise of giving retrospective judgements.Making history yield lessons, so that destinies are intelligible and errorsexposed, misunderstands what history can tell us. In short, it involves akind of abridgement that exaggerates the control with which men presideover events and, even more improbably, it implies that we know or canknow what would have happened had Julius Caesar not crossed the Rubicon.Hence Butterfield dismissed ‘pretended’ lessons of history as the result of thehistorian interpreting the past ‘in terms of some contemporary experience—he has what we might call the modern “set-up” in his mind’.26 His disdainfor such an enterprise followed from his belief that writing history is alwaysunfinished business: there are no complete histories, just as there are nodefinitive histories. Rather, a historical narrative can be nothing more thanan interim report; and as historians, ‘the best that any of us can do at a givenmoment only represents the present state of knowledge in respect of the sub-ject with which we are dealing’.27 Indeed, the interim character of history isthe inevitable consequence of the subject itself: the material with which thehistorian must work is complicated in such a way that it can never be fullypenetrated.

In viewing history as a representation of the historian’s ‘present state ofknowledge’, Butterfield was untroubled by a need to explain what counts asuseful historical knowledge: he simply did not believe that history providedany guidance for political action. Thus, he heaped scorn on those who wouldrummage through history for lessons to guide Cold War diplomacy, the fal-lacy of which manifested itself in the excesses of ‘whig’ history. He deploredthe Whig historian for apprehending a principle of abridgment, used to sep-arate the useful from the useless, in order to make the crooked look straight.In other words, the Whig approach provides ‘a short cut through that mazeof interactions by which the past was turned into our present’.28 By thismethod lessons to future generations shout out for attention while savingus from being made to look foolish for ever having believed that Chamber-lain could secure peace in his time. Once the complexity has been clearedfrom the field an intrepid Churchill is set to take the stage, dispensing lessonsfor future generations to digest and to implement lest they too suffer eternal(historical) humiliation. History of this sort is certainly made in the present,but for Butterfield it is history founded on a mistake: ‘when we organise our



general history by reference to the present we are producing what is really agigantic optical illusion’.29

But Butterfield could never fully bring himself round to the idea that allhistory is a story made in the present, for he always remained attached tothe idea that ‘academic’ history could attain to truth with the passage oftime and by exerting enough unsentimental effort. So where contempo-rary history closed its eyes to the facts in pursuit of glory, academic historycould penetrate the fog of pride provided it looked hard enough. The pas-sage of time would eventually distil the noxious effects of passion into awholesome sense of detachment; and then academic history would be vin-dicated, as it uncovered the ‘fundamental human predicament’ that lay atthe heart of all human conflict.30 Recognition of this predicament—that allmen are sinners—enables the historian to strip away the layers of veneer thatobscures the true nature of the problem, where ‘we shall find at the heart ofeverything a kernel of difficulty which is essentially a problem of diplomacyas such’.31 Here, Butterfield unwittingly joins the academic wagon with thecontemporary wagon on the track of useful history, and he sets them inmotion by suggesting that with knowledge of this predicament his fellowswould have known that an ‘age of terrible warfare’ was on the horizon.Hence he rejected lessons of history only to re-embrace them by subscrib-ing to a non-progressive account of history that purported to illuminate ‘thevery geometry of human conflict’, and he did so by simply reversing the les-son peddled by those ‘specialists in wishful thinking’ he ridiculed: historyteaches that conflict results from a fear born of man’s universal sin.32

History as fable

Butterfield’s notion of history as reflecting the historian’s ‘present state ofknowledge’ implies a relation of past and present that warns of the excessesof Heroic narrative. But a history made in the present need not lead to theabridgements, short-cuts, and illusions of the contemporary history he sodetested. This possibility passed unnoticed because, like Bull, he wanted tomaintain a distinction between historical facts and the historian’s ideas usedto organise those facts. In other words, Butterfield regarded history and thehistorian as being independent of one another, so that the former stands fora concrete (past) reality that the latter reconstructs in so far as his (present)state of knowledge allows. But this separation of past and present is in theend unsustainable: the historian cannot know what he does not alreadyknow. For a past that is entirely independent of the historian’s experienceis also a past that is placed outside the possibility of his understanding. Suchan independent past is impossible, Michael Oakeshott argues, because ‘[i]tis what is experienced sundered from the experience of it and offered anindependent existence which, nevertheless, it is powerless to sustain’.33 Theproblem, then, is not one of method, whereby we should strive to remain


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true to the calling of the academic historian while endeavouring to stayclear of the contemporary historian’s congenital prejudice; it is one in whichhistory is said to be perceived in facts when it can only be made of facts.

It is here that I turn to Oakeshott’s philosophy of history in order tobring coherence to the relation between past and present, and yet sympa-thetically engage with the general disposition of Butterfield’s position. Infact, Butterfield was right in rejecting the notion that lessons or practicalguidance can be derived from history, although not for the right reasons.Oakeshott’s view of history sustains this objection while providing an escapefrom the paradox of asking the historian to make sense of the facts thatare independent of the knowledge required to understand them. Accord-ing to Oakeshott, seeing history as a practical guide to present and futureevents confuses the activity of being an historian with the considerationsof practical life, the latter of which is intelligible in an evaluative discoursethat is ordered to our relation to our world. History does not begin withfacts that are interpreted in such a way that they speak to the circum-stances of present events; nor does it have any advice to offer so that itpossible to say that this situation requires this response and that situationanother. A prescriptive history is no history at all; and it is of no use tothose who might consult it. Indeed, he went so far as to say that ‘[t]heworld of history has no data to offer of which practical experience canmake use; and to conceive it as offering such data is to misconceive itscharacter’.34

An Oakeshottian conception of history begins with a world of ideas andends with an achievement of thought, for it relies fundamentally on thecontention that history is tied up in the judgement of the historian.35 Andthe activity of writing history involves a particular type of understandingthat goes beyond the mere recollection of an event, such as the date onwhich American colonists declared their independence from the rule ofKing George III. Thus, history can never be reduced to discrete facts which,taken together, give themselves readily and clearly to events—the discoveryof the New World, the partition of Africa, or the onset of decolonisation—which happened in something called the past. Facts are never so simple andunambiguous that they ‘speak for themselves’:36 identifying facts involvesjudgements that are necessarily informed by the historian’s current state ofknowledge. Moreover, these judgements are themselves contingent on theknowledge of those who read or hear them; and what they do not know—that which lays beyond their knowledge—cannot be recognised for what itis. For language may be crucially important in constructing our world butlanguage is of itself not enough: ‘language itself is powerless to convey ameaning to those who do not already understand. Words have a meaningfor us—or no meaning—in proportion to what we already know as well asin proportion to the “sense that they make” ’.37 For this reason, Oakeshottdescribes history as a fable; it is a fable told of facts, the judgement of which



results in an achievement of thought that is informed and conditioned bythe historian’s present state of knowledge.

Understanding history as fable invokes a way of thinking and speakingabout facts that is radically different from what is usually the case. Thecommon if not popular understanding of historical inquiry has as it start-ing point the collection of data, whereby source material—diaries, speeches,letters, minutes, and notes—is examined for the nuggets of raw informa-tion they contain. These facts are then interpreted, carefully lest they give afalse picture of what really happened, before they are stitched together intoa narrative of events that advances an argument, explaining perhaps thereasons why Harry Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima andNagasaki or the reasons why Hannibal failed to exploit his stunning victoryat Cannae by comprehensively defeating Rome. Hence the data of whichhistorian makes use is given; it exists prior to historical inquiry in the sensethat ‘the facts’ present themselves to the historian in a process of discovery.38

Oakeshott rejects this positivist view of historiography, saying that facts can-not provide the starting point of historical enquiry because it would place‘history’ beyond the historian’s knowledge and therefore beyond the pos-sibility of his understanding. In other words, a world of independent (past)facts, which the historian discovers, sifts, collates, organises, synthesises, andthen relates to an audience, is impossible, he argues, because it separates afact from the world in which it is intelligible; which implies also that ‘anisolated fact can be established while we remain ignorant of the world offacts to which it belongs’.39

A world of isolated (past) facts leads to the difficulty of making sense ofa particular fact, say the League of Nations covenant, without any knowl-edge of the First World War, distrust of the balance of power, the principleof collective security, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points, decisions takenat the Paris Peace Conference, America’s refusal to join the League system,and so much else. Thus, Oakeshott proposes an alternative view, one whichconceives historical facts as conclusions that are parts of a single worldof experience which embraces both past and present in a paradoxical butnonetheless coherent system of thought. An historical fact, he argues, doesnot correspond with ‘what was’ or ‘what really happened’; it is an achieve-ment of present experience that is qualified and articulated in terms of a pastwhich no longer exists. Indeed, for Oakeshott, facts are not starting points;they are conclusions.40 The difference, then, between a fact which is a partof an independent past and one which is a part of present experience is illus-trated in the way an event is perceived and understood. Consider, Oakeshottbegins, a man with a wooden leg. If we perceive him as merely passing by,the present is not qualified by the past. However, if what we perceive is intel-ligible as a man who has lost a leg which has been subsequently replaced bya wooden prosthetic, our present experience has been qualified by a concep-tion of the past. He then proceeds to explain the relation of the past with


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the present by arguing: ‘this awareness of past is evoked, not by neglectingpresent, but in a reading of present which evokes past expressed in theword “lost” ’.41

A world of historical facts belonging entirely to present experience col-lapses the distinction, employed by Bull and Butterfield, between a worldof past happenings and a world of present knowledge. In short, there is nointellectual structure to impose on isolated facts that are then ordered in asequence of past events: ‘the past in history varies with the present, restsupon the present, is the present’.42 For a long-lost document that namesthe builders of the Egyptian Sphinx does not change the past. What hap-pened then happened; it is dead, finished, and most certainly lost to oureyes. Such a document, were it to exist, would be a survival of a past eventthat is gone; and yet it would be unmistakably a part of the present in thesame way that the Taj Mahal, Monet’s Water Lilies, and St. Augustine’s ser-mons are all present facts in which our understanding of their respectivepasts emerge. Likewise, the discovery of the Rosetta Stone did not changehistory, it was and is a survival in terms of which our understanding of thedead past of Pharaohic Egypt emerges. Thus, for Oakeshott, the historicallyunderstood past is a construction; and because it never can be what ‘reallywas’ as such, ‘[i]t can neither be found nor dug up, nor retrieved, nor rec-ollected, but only inferred’.43 Writing history cannot, therefore, involve aprocess of discovery and historical truth cannot consist in achieving a tightfit between past events and present knowledge. Instead, the activity of beingan historian involves a creative engagement in which the standard of truthis nothing more and nothing less than coherence understood as ‘what theevidence obliges us to believe’.44

Making coherence the standard of (historical) truth should not be takento mean that history is indistinguishable from fiction. History is not what-ever the historian wishes to be; it is not a free construction sustained bynothing but a scaffolding of pure reason, ideology, or, worse, unadulteratedpreference. Moreover, Oakeshott denies that history is merely a reflectionof the historian’s autobiography whereby history is a social image of class,race, gender, or some other attribute. Rather, coherence is to be understood,Terry Nardin explains, as ‘coherence within a system of ideas’.45 Thus, anhistorical past that is inferred from present evidence and, consequently, isa world of present ideas born of the historian’s present experience, has noadvice to offer to present and future generations. For history is a fable pre-cisely because it is an account told from a particular point of view, namelythat of the historian; and that point of view is liable to change as his state ofknowledge changes. It is in this sense that history is like an index to a book,as Oakeshott puts it, which can be accessed from many different points inorder to pursue many different purposes.46

Oakeshott’s conception of history is particularly relevant to makingsense of a species of popular discourse in international relations. Few



‘lessons of history’ are as emotive and compelling as the injunction againstappeasing tyrants, which as Churchill warned the House of Commons afterCzechoslovakia was delivered to Nazi Germany in 1938, is ‘only the firstsip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup’.47 In the lead-up to the Iraq War of2003 The Daily Telegraph columnist John Keegan fretted about an odourof appeasement in the air, saying that ‘[t]he history of appeasement doesnot change. Hitler was once a weak little man—and it was the concessionsof the appeasers of his day that allowed him to grow strong’.48 George W.Bush invoked the same trope on the eve of hostilities when laying out thecase for disarming Saddam Hussein: ‘[i]n the 20th century, some chose toappease murderous dictators, whose threats were allowed to grow into geno-cide and global war. In this century, when evil men plot chemical, biologicaland nuclear terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of akind never before seen on this earth’.49 Such lessons of history are prof-fered as timeless pearls of wisdom that contemporary statespersons ignoreat their peril.

But the difficulty with such appeals to history is evident, for example,in E. H. Carr’s much celebrated The Twenty Years’ Crisis, the first edition ofwhich is dedicated ‘to the makers of the coming peace’. In this first edition(1939), Carr praises the (now) infamous Munich Agreement as representingthe ‘nearest approach in recent years to the settlement of a major interna-tional issue by a procedure of peaceful change’; indeed, he is unashamedlycandid in his view that Czechoslovakia’s fate, which resulted from ‘discus-sions round a table in Munich’, should be preferred to a result achieved bywar.50 However, references to Munich in the second edition (1946) soundnot a single note of praise and yet it too is dedicated ‘to the makers ofthe coming peace’. What changed was not the facts but the state of Carr’sknowledge; and still the (fallacious) ‘lesson of history’, a lesson tiresomelyrepeated to all present and future ‘makers of the coming peace’, holdsthat appeasement—for which Munich is a byword—is imprudent, immoral,and, in the end, does not work. A change of the exact same sort seems tobe at work as the Munich trope has given place to the Vietnam trope indescribing America’s increasingly difficult involvement in Iraq. The histori-cal pendulum is said to have swung again, investing lessons of quagmire andquandary with new-found currency, so that the confident child of Munich—‘mission accomplished’—has spawned a rather more menacing sibling: theIraq syndrome.51

Fashionable though such appeals to history might be, their shelf life is nogreater than what the market will bear. For the business of dealing in lessonsof history is not unlike selling England football shirts after the World Cuphas finished: demand will vary with knowledge of England’s success. When‘Munich’ or ‘Vietnam’ or ‘Iraq’ is invoked as a guide to the present events,the past is transformed into a kind of practical short-hand consisting in whatOakeshott describes as a ‘vocabulary of symbolic characters (ill-distinguishedfrom mythical figures and from such images as sturdy oaks, snakes in the


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grass, and the burdensome Albatross)’.52 Here, events are transformed intoicons of a didactic past which announce our desires, our purposes, and ourintentions. They communicate who we are and what we believe. They iden-tify policies that are to be praised and those to be condemned. And they issuewarnings that call out for caution and precedents for proceeding apace.53

Indeed, this kind of past, Oakeshott explains, is not concerned with under-standing objects and utterances in their own circumstances; it is concernedwith whatever meaning or use it might have in pursuing current engage-ments. It is only then that the accidents, triumphs, and failures of historymake any sense. In other words, history is made to be an authority, an adju-dicator between what is righteous and what is wicked, which, Oakeshottcontends, is ‘designed to justify, to make valid practical beliefs about thepresent and the future, about the world in general’.54

That such a practical past yields all sorts of lessons and examples of whichthe practitioner should take notice is obvious enough. In fact, when talk ofthe past enters into political discourse it is almost always as an expressionof practical concern. But unlike an historical past, which is a present worldinferred from and qualified by survivals of a lost past, a practical past iscomposed of survivals ‘recalled for use from where they lie in the presentand understood and valued for what they have to offer in current practicalengagements’.55 So where an historical past is concerned with the past assuch, a practical past is concerned with the acceptability or desirability ofparticular conclusions.

The many so-called ‘lessons of history’ which are said to speak to presentand future generations are audible only because they mean what we needthem to mean. Their circumstantial characters are unimportant; for example,the meaning and purpose of the scriptural injunction ‘eye for eye, tooth fortooth’ is of little concern to the prescriptively minded historian, who easilyforsakes its historically understood character of proportionality and restraintwhen it can be used practically to make the case for revenge.56 The onlyconnection such practical icons have with the past, Oakeshott argues, ‘is notto the past to which they ambiguously and inconsequentially refer but to thetime and circumstances in which they achieved currency in a vocabulary ofpractical discourse’.57 As icons they might be interesting for what they tellus about those who invoke them, but once they have been separated fromtheir circumstantial characters and transformed into icons, they have alsobeen separated from history, and they become useless as bearers of sometranscendental truth.

Conclusion

An Oakeshottian approach to history goes a long way in addressingthe limitations of the arguments advanced by Bull and Butterfield whilesympathetically engaging their claim that historical knowledge is importantin obtaining a proper understanding of international relations. Bull viewed



history as providing a basis of comparison from which to make speculativestatements about present events. But this position is problematic: the cate-gories ‘past’ and ‘present’ are confused in so far as he wants to maintain adistinction between independent (past) events and the historian’s (present)experience according to which these events are organised. The difficulty,then, is that the past which is to furnish the basis of comparison may alsobe the present, or at least partially so. Butterfield’s approach answers thisobjection by suggesting that historical narrative is but an interim report thatreflects the historian’s present state of knowledge, which led him also toreject the idea that historical knowledge provided a useful guide to politicalaction. Yet he too wanted to separate history and the historian in the beliefthat a certain kind of (academic) history could illuminate the ‘geometry’ ofhuman conflict, the proof of which is found in man’s universal sin. His rejec-tion of instructive history was incomplete because he never fully let go of anindependent past that (allegedly) confirmed the illusion of only one kind ofinstructive history: the progressive kind he associated with ‘contemporary’or ‘whig’ history.

The Oakeshottian rejection of the distinction between past events andpresent experience relieves us of the intellectual gymnastics required toaccept the English School proposition that historical knowledge is impor-tant in understanding international relations. In short, history is an idea,not a course of events that the historian relates after having discovered orexamined the facts. There are no facts to recover and no events to re-enact.58

Indeed, history is a construction, although not by the hands of men andwomen whose actions are often said to change the course of events: ‘[i]tis “made” by nobody save the historian; to write history is the only way ofmaking it’.59 That history is a peculiar though coherent kind of present expe-rience makes nonsense of the idea that the past speaks to the present. Thepast as such is gone and therefore has nothing to say; and whatever lessonsare attributed to it are in fact statements about the desirability of particu-lar conclusions, which are made in the present about the present. Hencehistorical knowledge is not to be understood in terms of ‘usefulness’; it isno tool with which to pursue other ends and it is no guide to present cir-cumstances, despite the ever pervasive fetish of equating good scholarshipwith policy relevance. In other words, history leads us nowhere, Oakeshottexplains, because ‘[n]either the truth nor the character of history depend, inany way, upon its having some lesson to teach us’.60

When placed against this backdrop the emphasis which the English Schoolplaces on the study of history is at once undermined but also paradoxicallyreaffirmed. In the first instance, it undermines the claim of difference withwhich Bull and other English School theorists wish to separate themselvesfrom American international relations. It is certainly true that historicalnarrative is far more prominent in English School scholarship than, forexample, the neo-neo debate that once dominated American scholarshipor the constructivist and rational choice approaches which now struggle


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for supremacy. English School scholarship is comparatively rich in the livesof kings and queens, the proceedings of conferences and congresses, andthe development of diplomacy, international law, and other internationalinstitutions. So there are differences of course, but their significance is exag-gerated. English School theorists stress the idiographic character of historymore so than their nomothetically inclined American counterparts, who aremore often concerned with questions of causation and the general patternsin which they are intelligible. But this difference is principally one of amethodological kind than one which points to an approach that makes useof history and another which does not.61 For Bull’s study of order, like Waltz’sstructural causes of war, Keohane’s and Nye’s institutional cooperation, andWendt’s logics of anarchy, is verified or falsified in the ‘laboratory of thesocial sciences’ that is history understood as a repository of independentfacts which stand for an equally independent past.

But if history is poorly conceived as a decorator’s catalogue from whichto choose a variety of colours to brighten up our theories, history is notirrelevant to the enterprise of theorising international relations. Strangelyenough, the Oakeshottian rejection of the distinction between past eventsand present experience reaffirms the importance English School theoristshave ascribed to historical knowledge. We should look to history, neither forguidance about what may come nor for clues about how we should act,but for what it imparts about the character of the activities in which humanbeings engage. The identity of a cricketer as a cricketer is not determinedby a demonstration of success, whereby the person who makes a centuryis more of a cricketer than one who is out for a golden duck. Identity, be itthat of a cricketer, a mother, or an innkeeper, is intelligible in the recogni-tion of the rules, conventions, and virtues of the activity. In other words, thedetermination of identity, as opposed to an evaluation of skill, calls forth anengagement according to which ‘a participant in the activity comes to berecognized not by the results he achieves but by his disposition to observethe manners of the “practice”.’62 History (and indeed only history) can tellus what it means to conduct oneself as a diplomat, as opposed to a carpenteror a shoemaker; and it can tell us what it means to participate in the activityof war, knowledge without which it would be impossible to distinguish, forexample, between combatants and innocents, between ‘new wars’ and oldwars. And it is the singular achievement of historical inquiry that such dis-tinctions emerge, not as ‘natural essences’ cut-off from further scrutiny, butas intelligible and indeed stable characters that ‘the evidence obliges us tobelieve’.

A history of this sort certainly forsakes the iconisised events which arehabitually invoked to salve an uneasy conscience or to instil courage wheredoubt lingers. It forsakes the notion that events point the way forward whenwe are said to confront a ‘turning point’ in history. Instead, the drama andintrigue that goes with clothing practical concerns in the language of his-tory gives place to the comparatively modest but more coherent enterprise



of interrogating the character of international society and its attendant prac-tices and institutions. It is then possible to make sense of the institution ofwar, to give but one example, understood as a settled mode of activity whichis intelligible in terms of contingent but nonetheless distinct attributes thatimpart an identity that is different from those imparted by ‘aggression’ or‘violence’.

It is in this vein that I have explored the idea of trusteeship.63 I have notstudied trusteeship for the purpose of deriving a transcendental meaning ofthe institution, or to determine the conditions which may give rise to a con-dition of trusteeship, but rather to understand what it denotes in the contextof international society. And I have studied it historically; that is, in the con-text in which it arose, and as it was understood by the people at the time, tomake sense of its distinct identity. That this identity is not an eternal essence,but a historically intelligible character, it is entirely possible for some of itscircumstantial attributes to change without also destroying the identity ofthe thing or activity in question. Indeed, that attributes can change whileleaving identity intact makes it possible to say that the activity of war inmedieval Europe imparted one or more characters that evoke similarities anddisclose differences with war in modern Europe while still speaking intelli-gibly of the activity of war. And it is the business of the historian or thehistorically minded theorist of international relations to interrogate thesecharacters, not because historical inquiry has a transcendental purpose thatsome how vindicates the course of history, but because it tells us somethingabout the activity of war, trusteeship, and so much else.

In denying a transcendental purpose to historical inquiry, I do not meanto argue that there is no place for evaluative discourse. It is then that we hearof good and bad diplomats, and wars that are aggressive, justified, necessary,or perhaps just foolish. But when the iconic representation of Munich isinvoked—weakness and immorality—history is pressed into service to makewhat is in fact a moral argument which is neither instructive nor historical.Here, the danger lies in claiming too much for history. There is surely a placefor moral argument in the study of international relations but the veracityof that mode of argument is not determined historically. Indeed, history isexactly what Bull said it was: history is a necessary as opposed to a sufficientcondition for understanding international relations. It is in this sense as wellthat the study of international relations cannot be reduced to the study ofhistory. English School theorists have been perhaps more forthright thanmost in acknowledging that their vocation involves a great deal more than‘doing history’.


1. A version of this chapter appeared as ‘Are There Any Lessons of History?’, inReview of International Politics, 44 (2007): 513–530.


William Bain 163

2. The English School is sometimes seen as something of a potential—though notunproblematic—bridge between international relations and international history.See Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, ‘International History and International RelationsTheory: A Dialogue Beyond the Cold War’, International Affairs, LXXVI (2000):741–754.

3. Martin Wight, Systems of States (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), p. 127.4. Martin Wight, ‘What Makes a Good Historian’, The Listener, February 17, 1955.5. Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (New York: W.W. Norton &

Company, 1965), p. 9.6. Martin Wight might also have been included alongside Bull and Butterfield, as he

is most responsible for directing English School scholarship towards the histori-cal sociology of state-systems. Moreover, his religious convictions are often said tohave profoundly shaped the character of his historical inquiry. However, he didnot write very much on history as such, and the content of his Christian outlookon history is very closely paralleled by that of Butterfield. See Hedley Bull’s intro-duction to Wight, Systems of States, pp. 11–12; Ian Hall, ‘Sir Herbert Butterfield andInternational Relations’, Review of International Studies, XXVIII (2002): 719–736;Robert Jackson, ‘Martin Wight’s Thought on Diplomacy’, Diplomacy and State-craft, XIII (2002): 1–28; and Scott Thomas, ‘Faith, History and Martin Wight: TheRole of Religion in the Historical Sociology of the English School of InternationalRelations’, International Relations, LXXVII (2001): 905–929.

7. Oakeshott’s thought has had a considerable influence on several theorists ofinternational society, most notably Robert Jackson, Terry Nardin, and NicholasRengger. The significance and potential of his philosophy of history for the gen-eral field of international relations has been recently addressed by Renee Jeffery,‘Tradition as Invention: The “Traditions Tradition” and the History of Ideas inInternational Relations’, Millennium, XXXIV (2005): 57–84.

8. Hedley Bull, ‘International Theory: The Case for a Classical Approach’, WorldPolitics, XVIII (1966): 366–368.

9. Ibid., 361, 379; and Hedley Bull, ‘International Relations as an Academic Pur-suit’, Hedley Bull on International Society, Kai Alderson and Andrew Hurrell, (eds)(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 256–257.

10. Bull, ‘International Relations’, p. 253.11. Hedley Bull, ‘The Theory of International Politics, 1919–1969’, Aberystwyth Papers:

International Politics, 1919–1969; Brian Porter (ed.) (London: Oxford UniversityPress, 1972), 31–32; and Bull, ‘International Relations’, p. 253–255.

12. Andrew Linklater and Hidemi Suganami, The English School of International Rela-tions: A Contemporary Reassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2006), pp. 87–88.

13. Ibid., p. 87.14. Ibid., pp. 91–92.15. Ibid., p. 92.16. Bull, ‘International Relations’, p. 264.17. Ibid., p. 249.18. Wight, Systems of States, pp. 191–192.19. Linklater and Suganami, pp. 264–276.20. Bull, ‘International Relations’, pp. 253–254.21. Ibid., pp. 253–254.22. Herbert Butterfield, History and Human Relations (New York: Macmillan, 1952),

pp. 12, 120.



23. Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History (New York: W.W. Norton &Company, 1965), pp. 16–17.

24. Butterfield, History and Human Relations, pp. 11–17, 104.25. George W. Bush, ‘President Discusses War on Terror’, National Defense University,

Fort Lesley J. McNair, March 8, 2005 (available at www.whitehouse.gov).26. Butterfield, History and Human Relations, pp. 162, 176.27. Ibid., p. 170.28. Butterfield, Whig Interpretation, pp. 24–25.29. Ibid., p. 29.30. Butterfield, History and Human Relations, p. 14.31. Ibid., p. 26.32. Ibid., pp. 9, 22, 31.33. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1933), p. 95.34. Ibid., p. 158. Oakeshott’s denial of any practical character of history has not gone

unchallenged. See W. H. Walsh, ‘The Practical and Historical Past’, Politics andExperience, Preston King and B.C. Parekh (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1968), pp. 13–17.

35. The following discussion is derived from ‘History is a Fable’, What Is History? andOther Essay, Luke O’Sullivan (ed.) (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004), pp. 32–44.Oakeshott’s conception of history is, in the main, laid out in Experience and ItsModes, pp. 86–168; ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, Rationalism and Politicsand Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991), pp. 151–183; and On Historyand Other Essays (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).

36. This phrase is commonly associated with E. H. Carr’s position in What is History?(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1964), p. 11. Oakeshott rejects Carr’s position,saying that it rests on an incoherent manner of identifying ‘facts’ and designatingthem as ‘significant’, which then ends up transforming ‘history’ into somethinglike a ‘politician’s or moralist’s retrospection’. See ‘What is History?’ What is His-tory? and Other Essays, Luke O’Sullivan (ed.) (Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2004),pp. 319–332.

37. Oakeshott, ‘History is a Fable’, p. 35.38. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 96.39. Ibid., p. 112. Terry Nardin provides a succinct and lucid account of this argument

in The Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott (University Park: Penn State UniversityPress, 2001), pp. 144–147.

40. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 108.41. Michael Oakeshott, ‘Present, Future and Past’, On History and Other Essays

(Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999), pp. 8–9. It is in this sense that Oakeshott’snotion of ‘historical past’ is not to be confused with a view of history, such as thatof Eric Hobsbawm, as encompassing ‘anything and everything that has happenedto date’. Oakeshott accepts that there are several conceptions of the past; however,he demarcates a very specific field for a genuinely historically understood past asconsisting in an autonomous mode of understanding. Hence an historical past isdistinct from a merely remembered, recollected, consulted, and recorded pasts inso far as it alone turns on ‘considerations of appropriateness and completeness’:‘[e]verything that the evidence reveals or points to is recognized to have its place;nothing is excluded, nothing is regarded as ‘non-contributory’. See Oakeshott,‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, pp. 168–175 and ‘Present, Future and Past’,


William Bain 165

pp. 17–18; and Eric Hobsbawm, ‘What Can History Tells Us About ContemporarySociety?’, On History (London: Abacus, 1997), p. 33.

42. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, pp. 107–108.43. Oakeshott, ‘Present, Future and Past’, p. 36.44. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 112.45. Ibid., pp. 100–102. Nardin distinguishes Oakeshott’s constructionist approach

from post-modern deconstruction, which claims there are no objective con-straints on the historian’s imagination of the past. See Nardin, Philosophy ofMichael Oakeshott, pp. 146–148.

46. Oakeshott, ‘History is a Fable’, pp. 35–36.47. Quoted in John Keegan, ‘Blair Must Turn a Deaf Ear to the Siren Calls of

Appeasers’, The Daily Telegraph, January 28, 2003 (available at: www.telegraph.co.uk).

48. Keegan, ‘Blair Must Turn a Deaf Ear’.49. George W. Bush, ‘President Says Saddam Hussein Must Leave Iraq Within 48

Hours’, Remarks by the President to the Nation, The Cross Hall, March 17, 2003(available at www.whitehouse.gov).

50. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1st edn (London: Macmillan, 1939), pp. 278,282. For an intellectual history of Carr’s masterpiece, including his defence ofappeasement, see Michael Cox’s introduction to the edition reissued by PalgravePress, 2001.

51. ‘Mission accomplished’ is the phrase which provided the backdrop for George W.Bush’s (now) much ridiculed announcement of the end of major combat oper-ations in Iraq. For a transcript of the President’s remarks, see ‘President BushAnnounces that Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended’, Remarks by thePresident from the USS Abraham Lincoln, at Sea off the Coast of San Diego,California, May 1, 2003 (available at www.whitehouse.gov). For a range of per-spectives on parallels drawn between Iraq and Vietnam, see Melvin Laird, ‘Iraq:Leaning the Lessons of Vietnam’, Foreign Affairs, LXXXIV (2005): 22–43; JohnMueller, ‘The Iraq Syndrome’, Foreign Affairs, LXXXIV (2005): 44–54; StephenBiddle, ‘Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon’, Foreign Affairs, LXXXV (2006): 14;Lawrence Freedman, ‘Rumsfeld’s Legacy: The Iraq Syndrome?’, The WashingtonPost, January 9, 2005, B04; ‘The Vietnam Syndrome’, The Economist, April 15,2004.

52. Oakeshott, ‘Present, Future and Past’, p. 44.53. Ibid., pp. 43–45.54. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, 104; ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’,

pp. 169–170.55. Oakeshott, ‘Present, Future and Past’, p. 41.56. On the meaning of ‘eye for eye’, see H. L. A. Hart, Punishment and Responsibility:

Essays in the Philosophy of Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 79; and C. L.Ten, Crime, Guilt and Punishment: A Philosophical Introduction (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1987), Ch. 3.

57. Oakeshott, ‘Present, Future and Past’, p. 48.58. The idea of re-enacting history is most commonly associated with R. G. Colling-

wood’s thought. Although he and Oakeshott are both regarded as students ofBritish Idealism, they differed fundamentally on their approaches to history. SeeR. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956),pp. 215–218, 302–307. For a comparison of their respective positions, see David



Boucher, ‘Human Conduct, History and Social Science in the Works of R. G.Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott’, New Literary History, XXIV (1993): 697–717.

59. Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes, p. 99.60. Ibid., p. 158.61. It is worth nothing that the English School has been criticised by American the-

orists for failing to make explicit its methodological commitments. See MarthaFinnemore, ‘Exporting the English School?’, Review of International Studies, XXVII(2001): 509–513.

62. Oakeshott, ‘The Activity of Being an Historian’, p. 151.63. W. Bain, Between Anarchy and Society: Trusteeship and Obligations of Power (Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 2003).


8The English School’s Approachto International LawPeter Wilson

One of the defining features of the English School is the emphasis it placeson normative rules, and in particular the rules of international law. Yet theposition of the English School on international law has nowhere been prop-erly set out. The first purpose of this chapter is to provide a fairly detailedaccount of the English School’s position on international law. I do this withreference to those members of the ‘classic’ English School who have beenmost concerned to explore the nature of international law and its place ininternational society: C. A. W. Manning, Hedley Bull, and Alan James. Thereare few, if any, better introductions to the role of international law in inter-national relations. The accounts provided by Manning, Bull and James aresystematic and precise. They are also highly accessible; they presuppose nomore than a basic knowledge of international law—its sources, scope, andsome of the controversies surrounding it. They similarly presuppose only abasic knowledge of modern international affairs and international theory.They eschew all unnecessary jargon. Admittedly, the idiosyncratic style ofManning is not to everyone’s taste. But while the mode of expression maybe unfamiliar, no specialist knowledge is needed to decipher it, only patienceand a reasonably alert intelligence.

I then look at the criticisms that are typically made of the school’sapproach and set out the main lines of reply, including those of certain‘modern’ members, namely Terry Nardin and Robert Jackson, who havesought to strengthen the methodological foundations of the approach.I then identify some of the limitations of the school’s approach which itsmodern adherents will need to address if its relevance is to be sustained inthe twenty-first century. I conclude with some reflections on method.

International law, society and order

The general stance of the school may be described as follows. Internationallaw is a real body of law, no less binding than domestic law, and therefore noless deserving of the name ‘law’. Although the main bases of international

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168 The English School’s Approach to International Law

order are to be found elsewhere, international law is certainly not withoutefficacy in this regard. Importantly, international law provides a normativeframework, an essential ingredient for the successful operation of any largeand complex social arrangement. By providing a reasonably clear guide as towhat is the done thing, and what is not, in any given set of circumstances,of what can be expected and what not, and what will be tolerated and whatwill likely be met with a disapproving, perhaps vociferous, response, lawhelps to reduce the degree of unpredictability in international affairs. Formembers of the English School, international law ‘stands at the very centreof the international society’s normative framework’.1 It supports ‘a structureof expectations without which the intercourse of states would surely sufferan early collapse’.2

While lacking a central legislature to make new and modify existing law,international society nonetheless has its own mechanisms for changing thelaw and keeping it up-to-date. As a result, international law is not immuneor unsympathetic to the call of justice. The slowness with which manychanges in the law take place is not so much a defect of international legalmechanisms as a reflection of the society in which they operate.

Unlike the situation pertaining in most domestic legal systems, interna-tional law should not be conceived as a means of social control, much less asan instrument of social reform (although there is a strong tendency to viewit in such a manner).3 Rather it should be seen as a body of rules, deemedby those to whom it applies as binding, the purpose of which is to facilitateregular, continuous, and generally orderly international relationships.

As a legal system, it is sui generis. To evaluate the significance and efficacyof international law in terms of a domestic legal standard makes no moresense than to evaluate the merits and utility of one activity—say golf—interms of another—say long-distance running. As competitive sports as wellas recreational activities both golf and long-distance running have things incommon. But success in these activities, as well as being relative to the per-sonal aims of the participant, depends on a strongly contrasting set of skillsand mental and physical disciplines. To judge one in terms of the skills anddisciplines needed to perform the other is absurd, or certainly not helpful.Likewise, it is absurd, or certainly not helpful, to judge international law interms of the sources, mechanisms, and objectives of law emanating from avery different, domestic, social milieu.

It may be inferred from this that the approach of the English School tointernational law is sociological. Members of the school have been at painsto point out that law always reflects the society from which it emanates. Anygiven system of law can only be properly comprehended and evaluated byexamining the social milieu that gives rise to it. Sense can thus only be madeof international law by making sense of international society. Importantly,the significance and efficacy of international law can only be ascertainedby examining the nature, institutional structure, values (if any), and goals


Peter Wilson 169

(if any) of international society. It was this essentially relativistic convictionthat led Manning, in particular, to stress that International Relations shouldbe not be conceived as part of Political Science, History, or Law but as adistinct academic discipline: one which drew on these and other cognatedisciplines, but which discarded their domestic, ‘state-bound’, legal, ethicaland sociological presuppositions.4

The defining features of international society

First and foremost, the school emphasises the absence of common govern-ment in international society. For Manning, ‘[m]unicipal law exists, andis what it is, because, domestically, there does exist social control. Inter-national law exists and is what it distinctively is because, internationally,there does not. Municipal law is the handmaiden of government, interna-tional law of diplomacy.’5 According to James, ‘ . . . the cardinal characteristicwhich distinguishes the international society from others is the lack of gov-ernment, the absence of central authority and the concomitant dispersal ofauthority’.6 Internationally there exists no central legislature to make newand amend existing legal rules. There is no central agency charged with theenforcement of the rules. There is no central court or judicial body empow-ered to adjudicate disputes over the rules—or at least not one before whicha state can haul another state against its will. In terms of H. L. A. Hart’sconception of law as a union of primary (prescriptive) rules and secondary(institutional empowering) rules, in international society there are no uni-versally agreed upon ‘rules of recognition’, ‘rules of change’, and ‘rules ofadjudication’.7

In Bull’s view, international law differs from municipal law ‘in one centralrespect: whereas law within the modern state is backed up by the authorityof government, including its power to use or threaten force, internationallaw is without this kind of prop’.8 As a consequence, and in sharp contrastto municipal law, the efficacy of international law does to a large extentdepend on self-help, including on occasions the threat and use of force. Itis for this reason, Bull continues, that there is an intimate connection ininternational society between the efficacy of law and the functioning of thebalance of power. ‘It is only if power, and the will to use it, are distributedin international society in such a way that states can uphold at least certainrights when they are infringed, that respect for rules of international law canbe maintained.’9

One consequence of the absence of central government is that the utilityof international law as an instrument of social change is severely limited. Indomestic society, law is frequently used as a tool of social policy. Changesare made to the law with the explicit intention of expediting changes inbehaviour. The employment of this tool is often successful due to fear onthe part of potential miscreants of punishment. But the main factor is the



greater respect for the law qua law that domestic society enjoys vis a vis inter-national society.10 So while certain social changes necessitate the creation ofnew rules of international law or the amendment of existing ones (for exam-ple, changes spurred by technological innovation in areas such as sea use,and the use of air and outer space), and while other desired changes can beassisted by changes in the law (for example, in the field of human rights),the law itself is powerless to bring about changes in behaviour unless suchchanges are already desired by all the relevant actors.11

The English School acknowledges, however, that the setting of generalstandards in law can have a long-run effect on behaviour. James puts thepoint as follows: a set of exact rights and duties ‘will almost certainly repre-sent a pre-existing intent or willingness on the part of all subject to them toact in the way they indicate’. Their translation into law is therefore not likelyto have much of an independent effect on behaviour. However, legal obli-gations that are only loosely defined may by virtue of that fact be accepteddespite a lack of a strong commitment to their observance. Since they donot have to pin themselves down in detail, the signatories may reasonablyassume that if they need to act in a way contrary to their commitment, theywill not have too much difficulty in finding a reasonably plausible legal jus-tification. ‘However, once a principle enjoys the dignity of law states maycome to feel, to a greater extent than before, that they should try to liveup to it.’ Moreover, ‘the inducement to do so will . . . be stronger in that theprinciple is now established as a criterion, albeit a rather ambiguous one,in the light of which those bound by it can be judged’. Additional criti-cal opportunities will have been created. As a result states may cautiouslyamend their behaviour in line with the obligation, ‘for they dislike beingcharged with breaches of the law’.12 Giving a social aspiration a footing inlaw can thus help bring about the realisation of that aspiration over time.In this way law can have a modest independent impact on internationalbehaviour. In James’s view the abolition of the slave trade, the outlawing ofthe use of force as an instrument of national policy, and the delegitimisationof colonialism all had their legal roots in the establishment of an initiallyvague legal principle.

The potential independent impact of law has recently been analysedby Yasuaki Onuma, a prominent Japanese international lawyer. He cate-gorises some treaties as ‘aspirational’ in that they embody global aspirationsshared by the overwhelming majority of members of international society.Examples include the 1966 UN human rights conventions and the 1990 UNFramework Convention on Climate Change. In entering such treaties, statescommunicate to their peers in the most solemn way possible their intentionto work towards certain common goals. These treaties are not necessarilyobserved from the outset in a strict manner. It is widely known, for exam-ple, that there is a gap between major human rights treaties and reality.13

Yet framing such agreements in law gives them a dignity, legitimacy, andauthority that no member of the international club can openly deny. ‘As


Peter Wilson 171

such they induce convergence, if not strict observance, of the behaviour ofdiverse members of international society over a period of time.’14 The trendfor this kind of ‘aspirational’ law-making since 1945 is sufficiently strong forDorothy Jones to talk of a ‘declaratory tradition’ in modern internationallaw, a key feature of which is to create a body of rules and intentions moreakin to moral philosophy than positive law.15

A further consequence of the absence of government is the familiar reflec-tion on the security imperative. In domestic society individuals look togovernment and its agencies to provide a large amount of their physicaland, in many cases, their economic security. States are not so lucky. Whilethey may belong to universal or regional associations whose declared job itis to ensure the collective security of its members, states know that whenit comes to security they ultimately have to look after themselves. Thisexplains why, when a conflict arises between ‘an urgent national demandand fidelity to the law’, it is usually the latter that gives way.16 Largely if notexclusively because of the anarchical setting in which they find themselves,states are highly self-regarding in their behaviour. They invariably put thesatisfaction of important national interests before observance of the law onthe relatively rare occasions when they starkly conflict. It also explains why,although there is a huge amount of important international law in the fieldof security, states have not been greatly assured by those legal instrumentswhereby the parties bind themselves never to attack or threaten to attacktheir fellows, or commit themselves to immediately come to the assistanceof the victim of aggression. It is due to this understanding of states’ self-interpretation of their security predicament that members of the EnglishSchool share E. H. Carr’s dim view of Article 16 of the League of NationsCovenant and the Kellogg-Briand Pact.17

The second defining feature concerns the importance of normative rules insociety, and the role of the most important of those rules—law—in shapingbehaviour. According to the English School, normative rules are essentialfor the efficient and orderly conduct of any complex social activity. Suchrules provide a social grouping with a ‘body of understandings about properbehaviour’.18 They provide social actors with a fair amount of confidence asto what, normally, will be done and what will not be done, and the mode ofits doing. In brief, normative rules provide a behavioural framework. As AlanJames puts it, these rules are ‘the sine qua non for the existence of coherentgroup activity or an effectively-functioning society’.19

Normative rules can be of several kinds: rules of prudence, of etiquette,moral or ethical rules. However, by far the most important kind of norma-tive rules, in international as in domestic society, are legal rules. Accordingto James:

The fundamental explanation for this is to be found in the different oblig-atory force of legal and non-legal rules. For, in the public sphere, non-legalrules carry a somewhat uncertain sense of obligation. Those to whom they



apply are expected rather than obliged to observe them. A standard hasbeen erected to which it is intended that behaviour should conform, butsociety and its members customarily feel that they have no ground for try-ing to insist upon it. Observance is the done rather than the demandedthing. Law, on the other hand, is inseparably associated with the idea ofstrict obligation.20

Part of its obligatory nature is that the law generally aims for precision. Itsobject is to leave those bound by it in little doubt as to what it expects ofthem. There are exceptions, but ‘generally the main function of law is tocreate an exact as well as a binding relationship’.21

Of course, the extent to which this function is achieved varies from lawto law and from system to system. There is precise law and vague law (andnot all vague law is bad law). In Manning’s view certainty as to what the lawrequires is the exception rather than the rule, even in the most orderly andlegally fastidious societies:

What litigants get even from the highest court in the land, is at besta decision which is constitutionally and legally incumbent upon themto accept as presumably correct. It is formally binding upon them. Butlawyers, even so, are at liberty to probe in published articles the reason-ing upon which the decision rested. So, when it is said, in belittlement ofinternational law, that all too often, when appealed to, its trumpet givesforth an uncertain sound, the fitting comment is that this is inevitableand only to be expected, since international law is like any other kindof law.22

No sooner have they established the importance of international law, how-ever, than they set about dispelling the sanguine belief that it has anindependent causal effect on behaviour. In their view, international lawdoes not so much determine state behaviour as provide a framework withinwhich and with reference to which states make their decisions. ‘The typicalquestion asked by a state is not, what does the law require me to do? but,does the law permit me to do this? or, how can I lawfully achieve this goal?Likewise it will ask whether it has any ground for complaint, in particu-lar circumstances, or whether another state’s complaint is well grounded’.23

In Manning’s view, it is in the main only indirectly that the decisions ofstates are influenced by legal considerations, the main factor at work herebeing ‘the importance attached by others to the law’s correct observance’ (onwhich more below).24

Bull similarly contends that while the rules of international law are widelyobserved, it would be wrong to conclude that the principal explanation forthis is respect for the law itself. ‘International law’, he says, ‘is a social real-ity to the extent that there is a very substantial degree of conformity to its


Peter Wilson 173

rules; but it does not follow from this that international law is a powerfulagent or motive force in world politics.’25 States sometimes obey interna-tional law through habit or inertia: ‘they are, as it were, programmed tooperate within the framework of established principles’.26 In more rationalmode, they sometimes view actions sanctioned by international law as being‘valuable, mandatory or obligatory’ regardless of any legal undertakings theymay have acquired (what Bull calls the ‘international law of community’).Observance may result from coercion or a threat of coercion from a superiorforce (the ‘international law of power’). Observance may also result from theinterest a state perceives in reciprocal action: many agreements are upheldby a strong sense of mutual interest (the ‘international law of reciprocity’).

The argument that states obey international law only when it coincideswith their interests, or that they do so only for ulterior motives, does nothowever dispose of the question of the law’s legal force. ‘The importance ofinternational law’, Bull concludes, ‘does not rest on the willingness of statesto abide by its principles to the detriment of their interests, but in the factthat they so often judge it in their interests to conform to it.’27 While itwould be incorrect to assume that international behaviour is determined bythe law, it is a salient fact that states often consider observance of the lawto be in their interest. Furthermore, they are almost invariably concerned toact in a manner not inconsistent with the law, or at least to act in a mannernot inconsistent with a plausible reading of it. They are reluctant to acquirea reputation as law-breakers.

This latter point is central to Manning’s interpretation of why interna-tional law meets with such widespread compliance. On the one hand, byproviding a set of agreed symbols for the conduct of international rela-tions, law in a sense simplifies international life. ‘It is here,’ he suggests,‘in the partial prefabricating of the hundred and one decisions that makeup the daily round for the normal middle-of-the-road sovereign member ofinternational society, that international law performs its most characteris-tic service.’28 On the other hand, much of international life proceeds onthe generally well-founded assumption that ‘what is bindingly provided forwill duly be performed . . . . And this despite the absence of a court aroundthe corner before which a state defaulting on a promise may be hauled.’29

States comply with many of their legal obligations because it is convenientor beneficial for them to do so. But they also frequently comply with thelaw even when the benefit derived from so doing is uncertain. The reasonfor this, Manning argues, is peer-pressure, real or perceived. According toManning, ‘like the individual, the state conducts itself in the presence of acloud of witnesses, comprising a diversity of what to the social psycholo-gist are known as reference groups. And, as often as not, if it be wonderedwhy a state has done this or that, and no more obvious explanation avails,the answer is that, in doing this or that, it was meeting the expectationsof some politically or diplomatically consequential reference group.’30 For



Manning, regard for legal obligations is to a large extent a function of theexpectations of the relevant reference group. The judgement of the relevantreference group was, in Manning’s opinion, a potent sanction for the effi-cacy of any given legal rule. (It is worth noting, however, that in the 1960sand 1970s Manning believed that the reactions to breaches of the law ofthe relevant reference group were losing their fierceness and authenticity,and consequently their terrors. And, ‘the less your indignation, the less myself-restraint’.31)

A third defining feature of the English School’s sociology of internationallaw is the emphasis it gives to the lack of solidarity in international soci-ety. For members of the English School, unlike realists, lack of solidarity ismore a cause of anarchy than an effect. The legal implications of this lackof solidarity are profound. It has largely undermined attempts to outlawwar and transform international society into a Kelsenian ‘coercive order’ inwhich acts of war are conceived as either breaches of law or measures oflaw enforcement.32 In Bull’s view, agreement on this conception is unlikelyto be forthcoming. ‘The typical case is that in which states are not agreedas to which side in a conflict, if either, possesses a just cause. There maybe deep disagreement among states as to which side represents the commu-nity and which the law breakers, or there may be general concurrence intreating war as purely political in nature.’33 Part of Bull’s fondness for thepositive international lawyers of the nineteenth century derived from theirfirm appreciation of the lack of solidarity in international life and their con-sequent view that the law did not distinguish between just and unjust causesof war.34

A second consequence of the lack of international solidarity is thatchanges in the law can only be made on the basis of consent. States donot trust their fellow members of international society to make law for themsince they cannot guarantee they will be of the same mind, of the sameideological and political disposition. In practice this has two important con-sequences. On the one hand, it means that international law is not easilyaltered. There are well-established procedures in domestic society for alter-ing the law even if such alterations are favoured by some but by no meansall. In international society such procedures, to the extent that they exist,are invariably clumsy and inefficient. This makes international law moreprotective than municipal law of the ‘vested interest of the few’.35 On theother hand, it means that in frustration, or as a means of ideological war-fare, states sometimes seek to press a majority view (or what they assumeto be a majority view) on the rest of international society. They thus seekto replace consent with consensus and assume the mantle of speaking forthe conscience of mankind. This approach led Manning to conclude thatthe principal site of this kind of activity, the United Nations, had become(in contrast to the far more honourable and honest League) little more thanan arena for the conduct of political warfare.36 In Bull’s view, the tendency


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on the part of certain states to assume a consensus, and to act as if theyrepresented that consensus when no consensus actually existed, was a majorthreat to international order. ‘The result . . . is not that the rules deriving fromthe assumption of consensus are upheld, but simply that the traditional ruleswhich assume a lack of consensus are undermined.’37

Criticisms

Four types of criticism are typically levelled at the classic English School’sreading of the relationship between international law and international soci-ety. The first is that the school simply restates the core propositions ofnineteenth- and early twentieth-century legal positivism. The notion thatsociety and law are inextricably intertwined, that the character of a legal sys-tem is always a reflection of the character of the society that gives rise to it,and that the anarchical character of international society accounts for theparamount importance of consent and self-help in international law—noneof this is very original. The second criticism is that the school conceivesinternational law in a limited and in certain respects unrealistic way. Inconfining its understanding of law to ‘a body of rules which binds statesand other agents in world politics . . . and is considered to have the status oflaw’,38 it fails to recognise the indeterminacy of much law and the extent towhich cultural, political, ethical, and other factors intervene in internationallegal processes. The third criticism is that the school’s approach is inherentlyconservative, perhaps even morally complacent. The sociology it posits forunderstanding international law is one that rests on certain static features ofinternational life such as absence of central government and lack of cultural,social, and political solidarity. It consequently endorses laws that are limitedin ambition, laws that aim to keep things more or less as they are (becausethat is the limit of what the society it reflects can tolerate). But a sociologywhich emphasised change—globalisation, cultural homogenisation, grow-ing demand for the realisation universal human rights—would supply verydifferent criteria for judging legal vitality. The moral complacency residesin the reluctance on the part of members of the school to step outside theworld of states and make ethical judgements based on more ‘critical’ andindependent values. The lack of willingness to criticise the law, accordingto this view, reflects general satisfaction with the law, which in turn reflectssatisfaction with the values of the chief architects of the law: the great pow-ers.39 The fourth criticism is that the school’s propositions are very general innature, and little effort is made to empirically verify them. While members ofthe English School have consistently stressed the centrality of internationallaw to international society they have done little to establish causality; thatis, identify precisely the mechanisms by which and the extent to which lawproduces certain behaviours.



There is no doubt that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century legal pos-itivism had a profound influence on the thinking of English School legalcommentators, as recent scholarship has affirmed.40 One of Manning’s firstpublished articles was a reappraisal of John Austin’s jurisprudence.41 Bullwas influenced by Oppenheim and conceived much of his work in IR interms of retrieving the lessons and wisdom of nineteenth-century politicaland legal thought, which was based on a firm appreciation of the limits ofcooperation, particularly collective decision-making and collective action,in a culturally plural world.42 James was influenced by Manning, and whilehis ‘Sociology of International Law’ course, taught at the LSE in the 1960sand 1970s contains few references to the big names of positivist interna-tional law of the nineteenth century, it is full of references to those lawyerswho assumed their mantle in the early mid-twentieth century—Brierly,Schwarzenberger, Fitzmaurice, Jennings, Stone.

Of equal importance, however, is the intellectual context in whichManning, Bull, and James wrote. Manning was reacting against those writersof the League period—his LSE professorial predecessor, Philip Noel-Baker,chief among them—who believed that peace could be achieved by outlaw-ing certain types of war and replicating internationally those institutionsand practices successful in producing civil order domestically.43 Bull wasreacting partly against these ideas (his first book Control of the Arms Racewas a direct response to Noel-Baker’s The Arms Race on which he workedfor a period as Noel-Baker’s research assistant), and partly against their latestmanifestation in the ‘policy science’ approach of Myers S. McDougal andthe New Haven School, and the World Order Models Project of Richard Falkand Saul Mendlovitz. Against these moves Manning, Bull, and James did notsee themselves as offering something new, but rather as re-stating to a newaudience, the nature of international society, the limits of its corrigibility,and the values it helped to preserve.

The second criticism comes in more or less radical forms, from the revi-sionist stance of Rosalyn Higgins to the instrumentalism of the New Havenschool and the radical rejectionism of Martti Koskenniemi and Critical LegalStudies.44 According to Higgins, international law is best conceived not as abody of rules but as a ‘continuing process of authoritative decisions’.45 Lawinvolves far more than the impartial application of pre-existing rules. ‘Inter-national law is the entire decision-making process . . . not just the referenceto the trend of past decisions.’46 Those charged with making decisions on thebasis of international law do not simply find the relevant rule and then applyit. Rather they make choices, not between fully justified and groundlesslegal claims, but between claims possessing varying degrees of legal merit.The process will always involve considerations—cultural, humanitarian, andpolitical—other than the purely legal. Higgins concludes that policy consid-erations are an integral part of the international legal process.47 Whetherthey are aware of the fact or not, ‘authoritative decision makers’ habitually


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rely on policy preferences and assumptions in arriving at decisions on thelaw. No amount of legal training will enable them to keep law ‘neutral’. Lawand politics are inextricably linked. Higgins makes the further claim thatinternational law is a normative system ‘harnessed to the achievement ofcommon values’.48 This opens the door to a fully New Haven school con-ception of law as an instrumental tool for the realisation of these commonvalues.

Bull’s response to this view was typically robust. He conceded that the pro-cess of legal decision-making, nationally as well as internationally, involvedextraneous factors such as the social, moral, and political outlook of judges.Decision-making could never be a pure process of the non-contentious iden-tification and application of existing legal rules. But without reference to abody of rules, the idea of law, Bull claimed, was unintelligible. The notion oflegal decision-making as a distinct social process, distinguishable from othersocial processes, could only be sustained by reference to a pre-existing andagreed body of legal rules. The conception of international law as a body ofbinding rules was, therefore, paramount. The existence of extraneous factorsin legal decision-making did not do away with the concept of legal reason-ing. The implication of merging the legal, political, and other social domainson the ground of providing a more realistic account of how law is actuallymade was that lawyers would cease to have anything distinctive to offer. Theidea that international law was not a body of rules but a process of authori-tative decision undermined International Law as a branch of study separatefrom Sociology or Political Science. Ultimately, the logic of conceiving lawin this way, and of determining its content with reference to its stated orpostulated social purpose, was the reduction of choice between rival legalclaims ‘to the choice between one authority’s moral and legal values andthose of another’.49

Moreover, the English School is concerned with identifying actuallyexisting norms of state behaviour. Laws, particularly hard (precise, widelyaccepted, and observed) laws, signal the most substantial norms. Too muchattention to legal process can lead to a confused situation in which the actualidentity of the norm is lost. Bundling everything pertaining to or impingingon international law into a basket called ‘international law’ merely serves tocompound the problem.

The assertion that the school’s approach is conservative and perhaps evencomplacent, our third criticism, has been effectively dealt with in landmarkworks of the modern English School by Nardin and Jackson. In subtlydifferent ways both theorists draw on the insights of Michael Oakeshott onthe character of different types of human association, to provide a robust,political theoretical, defence of the value of international society as a partic-ular kind of human association. For Nardin it is a practical association. Thisis conceived as a relationship between individuals or groups who pursue dif-ferent and possibly incompatible purposes. The basis of their association is



commonly accepted restrictions on how they each may pursue their sepa-rate purposes. In terms of this conception, international law is understoodas a body of common rules, by and large rooted in the customary practicesof states, which enables states to coexist while pursuing diverse purposes.Practical associations embrace a conception of law and morality which isprocess or constraint orientated: their purpose is to foster mutual constraint,mutual accommodation, and the toleration of diversity. Purposive associ-ations, by way of contrast, consist of relationships between individuals orgroups who cooperate for the purpose of securing certain shared beliefs, val-ues, or interests. The basis of this association is the existence of shared goalsand the adoption of cooperative practices for their achievement. In terms ofthis conception, international law is a body of rules understood instrumen-tally. Their value is judged according to the relative efficacy with which theyfoster the desired ends. Purposive as opposed to practical conceptions thusembrace a conception of law that is end-orientated.50

For Jackson international society is a societas. It consists of ‘human rela-tions characterized by the coexistence of independent selves who conductthemselves by freely observing common standards of conduct’ (‘morality asthe art of mutual accommodation’ in Oakeshott’s terms). International lawaccording to this notion consists primarily of a body of practices: usages andcustoms devised over time by statespeople in order to define and facilitatetheir relationships and avoid unnecessary collision. By way of contrast a uni-versitas consists of ‘human relations characterized by collective enterprisebetween mutually dependent partners, or collaborators, in the pursuit of aconjoint purpose’ (the ‘morality of the common good’ in Oakeshott’s terms).International law according to this conception consists primarily of a seriesof declared goals and ideals towards which statespeople strive in their foreignpolicies, and a series of measures to facilitate their achievement. Rather thanembedded practices regulating current conduct, it consists of declarations ofintent regarding conduct in the future.51

One of the reasons for making these distinctions between different typesof human association, and setting out their characteristics so carefully (andin the case of Nardin in fine detail), is to demonstrate that one type of asso-ciation (purposive or universitas) is not in principle superior to the other(practical or societas)—though the prejudice of the modern state has wroughtthis assumption. Much depends on the character of the associates in ques-tion, and the commonality or divergence in values, goals, and interests. Intrue conservative fashion (and very much in the spirit of Oakeshott) Nardinand Jackson demonstrate that given the diverse character of states, a practi-cal association or societas is a superior form of human arrangement than apurposive association or universitas.

Furthermore, there are great dangers in attempting to force internationalsociety into a purposive mould. With regard to international law this issummed up in Jackson’s critique of the declaratory tradition. He notes that


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many politicians sign broad declarations of the UN and other internationalorganisations ‘in full awareness that they are not obliged to achieve or evenpursue the ideals they affirm’. Such affirmations are easy to make and theirvalue as standards of conduct is low. Many of these declarations and res-olutions cannot be realised or enforced. This has the corrosive effect ofdiscrediting the UN and other organisations when the undertakings givenare not fulfilled or even seriously pursued. In this way such declarations pro-voke cynicism on the part of many who expect international actors to liveup to their ideals. ‘Is there any more efficient way of morally discreditingoneself,’ Jackson concludes, ‘than by declaring an intention to do some-thing that is deemed to be urgently required . . . and then failing to do it?’Making declarations and proclaiming praiseworthy goals is an undemand-ing activity. Unless matched by binding obligations the result is merely thecheapening and politicisation of ideals. ‘Rather than reinforcing and deep-ening the traditional moral basis of society . . . the declaratory approach mayhave the opposite effect of undermining it by stretching it and diluting it.’52

The contribution of Nardin and Jackson, at root, is to have constructeda more robust moral defence of international society, and the internationallaw that serves it, than that hitherto provided by the English School. Bull’sdefence was that international society provided (or was capable of provid-ing) a greater degree of order for its members (and indeed humankind as awhole) than its alternatives, and that these alternatives were in any event ofdoubtful viability. Nardin and Jackson persuasively add the liberty of statesto pursue their diverse purposes to the moral good facilitated by interna-tional society. They further establish that there may be reasons to prefer apractically based association of states even when the achievement of a morepurposive alternative is practicable. They thereby scotch the claim that theEnglish School is guilty of moral complacency.

The fourth criticism concerning the generality of the English School’spropositions, the failure to empirically verify them, and the failure to iden-tify relationships of cause and effect amounts to a serious misunderstandingof the nature of its approach. The generality of its propositions is a reflec-tion of the fact that, certainly in its classical mode, the English School hasbeen concerned not with this or that state, or this or that group of states,but with the society of states as a whole. It has sought to borrow a phrasefrom Manning, to take a bird’s-eye view, and arrive at a general understand-ing of the role law internationally. Such an understanding must precedecausal analysis. Moreover, the English School understanding of the role oflaw internationally seems to account for certain key facts better than rivalunderstandings. While state behaviour is never determined by law alone,states nonetheless take law very seriously; while they never act contraryto their perceived interest, they frequently deem law, or legal propriety, tobe a factor in the calculation of interest; and while they sometimes breachthe law, they rarely do so brazenly—they always attempt to offer a legally



plausible defence of their actions. Nicholas Wheeler’s recent study of theKosovo bombing campaign is a good example of English School analysis inwhich interests, ideas of propriety, and law are seen as constantly circlingone another.53

New directions?

The English School’s sociology of international law is fine as far as it goes.States are still the most important category of actor in international rela-tions. States are still by far the most important subjects of internationallaw. The lack of solidarity on so many questions of international import—concerning inter alia environmental protection, controlling the spread ofweapons of mass destruction, the promotion of democracy, the limits oflegitimate non-state violence, humanitarian intervention, compensation forpast colonial wrongs, the obligations of rich nations towards the poor—makes the creation of new law a slow, cumbersome, and often fractiousprocess. There is still little agreement on the need for and the feasibilityof central enforcement mechanisms. International law, for good or for ill,remains a convenient behavioural framework rather than an instrument forsocial control, or vehicle for the promotion of the world common good.

But the approach of the school does have a number of limitations. Threeof them are salient.

The role of power

First, while not the only factors accounting for the wide observance ofinternational law, members of the English School stress the importance ofenforcement, or fear of enforcement, according to the principle of self-help,and social pressure in the form of the expectations of ‘relevant referencegroups’. The implications of this position, however, have not been fullyexplored. The decentralised nature of the international legal system pro-vides states with a good deal of discretion on whether and how to respond tosuspected breaches of the law. Decision-makers inevitably take into consider-ation a variety of factors. Legal considerations no doubt feature. But politicaland economic factors are invariably paramount. The implication of this isthat those states with the most political clout and the greatest economicresources at their disposal will be in the best position to effectively respondto suspected breaches, and to deter or fend off the negative responses of oth-ers to suspected breaches of their own. This puts a solitary superpower suchas the United States in a uniquely strong and privileged position. Not onlyare its own legally dubious acts unlikely to be met with an effective nega-tive response, but it enjoys an unusual amount of discretion on the laws itchooses to uphold and thus further sanctify, and those it chooses to overlookand thus, very possibly, weaken.


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The long-term implications of this for the shape of the internationallegal order are profound. To remain effective any legal system has to beseen by the majority of those it applies to as impartial. If large segmentsof the law are seen as providing special protection for particular groups atthe expense of the community, the law itself, and its normative validity, isthrown into disrepute. The unipolar position of the United States presents aspecial challenge to the benign conception of the links between power andlaw promulgated by the English School. The challenge is complicated notonly by the absence of effective balancers, but the sceptical even contemp-tuous attitude towards international law exhibited by influential sections ofAmerican society.

Secondly, the English School has had little to say on the role of power ininternational courts and tribunals. One reason for this is that the heydayof the English School in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with the height ofthe Cold War and the emergence of other fissures in the international bodypolitic. At this time there was little opportunity for international juridicalinnovation, and little of it took place. Since the end of the Cold War, how-ever, the opportunity and the will to give law more ‘teeth’ by creating newcourts and tribunals has arisen, and while the pace of innovation—as a goodEnglish scholar might predict—has been slow, considerable successes havebeen chalked up, for example the dispute settlement procedure of the WTO,the Hague, Arusha, and Sierra Leone war crimes tribunals, and the Interna-tional Criminal Court (ICC). But there is a sense in which such courts andtribunals are beholden to states not only for their success, but the continuedexistence. States are the paymasters, rich and powerful ones in particular.Yet it is states, or in the case of the ICC and the war crimes tribunals, theleaders or high ranking officials of states, that these courts and tribunals aremandated to put, in extremis, in the dock. The dilemma is clear enough. Ifthey are too tough, or perhaps too consistent, judges and prosecutors riskundermining support (political, moral, and financial) for the very processesthey are trying to implement and strengthen. There is therefore a systemicincentive for courts and judges to tread more delicately in the internationallegal field than they usually do in the domestic—for fear of antagonisingtheir paymasters.

On the other hand, it may be true, as one leading practitioner and legalauthority has recently argued, that a judicial change in climate may betaking place.54 States seem to be more prepared to impose strong struc-tures upon themselves, and not run away, in the form of withdrawal ofsupport, when the going gets tough. This possibility notwithstanding, itcannot be denied that courts and tribunals are a part of and are some-times influenced by wider power-political processes. Although they haveignored it in the past, the nature of this relationship will require greaterscrutiny in the future from those working within the English Schooltradition.55



Norm change

There is a large and growing literature on the nature of norms and thedynamics of norm change in international relations. Given the sociologi-cal nature of its approach it is surprising that members of the classic EnglishSchool gave scant attention to this issue. The role of NGOs, pressure groups,political parties, cross-national political groupings, and epistemic commu-nities in changing or modifying the values of states was nowhere seriouslyexplored. Certain contemporary English School members, notably AndrewHurrell, have begun to make amends for this neglect.

While noting the importance of such non-state actors in norm develop-ment, Hurrell has highlighted the fact that most of the traffic in normativeideas is one way: from the West to the rest. Most NGOs are Western inorigin and they pursue a predominantly Western liberal or humanitarianagenda.56 One consequence of this may be the further narrowing of societaland cultural diversity and a reshaping of the world in the image of the West.Many will view this as largely for the benefit of the West. The point here isthat there may be dangers in the headlong rush to a more solidarist worldlegal order the desirability of which global civil society theorists and activistsassume almost without question. True, the pluralist conception of interna-tional law can no longer do service unassisted. With the domestic sourcesof international upheaval and conflict so widely understood and recognised,it would be palpably retrograde to seek confine the chief norms of interna-tional society to the relations between states, and bar them from having anypurchase on what goes on within them. But the central purpose of the plu-ralist conception, the maintenance of peaceful coexistence between highlydiverse political actors, is one that retains great relevance. A rush to soli-darism that ignores the slow pace of the growth of a sense of internationalcommunity may serve to undermine the very principles it seeks to uphold.A large gap could open up between theory and reality, between obligationand practice. The resulting cynicism and accusations of hypocrisy could havea withering effect on genuine attempts to uphold common internationalstandards, as has been the sad experience in such bodies as UNESCO and theUN Commission on Human Rights.57

Connected with this issue of norm change, members of the classicEnglish School were perhaps too willing to dismiss liberal interpretationsby the UN Security Council of its obligation to promote international peaceand security as a wilful interpretation of the Charter, for narrow politicalpurposes, and a corruption of the international legal process. Their sociologynow seems based on too rigid a separation between domestic and interna-tional factors. Declaring apartheid in South Africa or white supremacy inRhodesia as a threat to international peace and security does not appeartoday to be stretching the law as far as it did then. Again, the widerecognition of the domestic sources of upheaval and conflict instability is


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an important factor. In certain extreme cases of human rights abuses andsystematic persecution of minority groups (e.g., in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia,Kosovo), members of the Security Council have been able to go beyondthe usual foot-shuffling and tepid condemnation. Moral concern has beeninseparable from fears of the likely consequences for international stabilityof the continuation of such untrammelled brutality. In the light of this agree-ment and recognition of the interconnections between domestic brutalityand international security, the cautious expansion by the Security Councilof its remit is arguably not as damaging to the fabric of international orderas Bull and Manning considered it to be in the 1970s.58

Domestic and transnational reference groups

A realist might conclude that a superpower enjoying the unrivalled militaryand economic strength of the United States is in a position to flout interna-tional law with impunity. It can use its strength and influence to minimisethe impact of any measures other members of international society mightdeploy in response. The mere existence of its vastly superior strength andinfluence is sufficient to ensure that the response of many will be muted.It is interesting to observe, however, that even superpowers, when doingsomething controversial, invariably offer a legal defence, as well as a polit-ical or moral defence, of their actions. Even when they emphasise, as theysometimes do, the high moral causes for which they act, they never claimthat such high causes justify their violation of the law.59 Even in extremecases where an act is manifestly in conflict with the law, states big and smallstill offer some sort of legal justification.60 As members of the English Schoolpoint out, this alone demonstrates the importance states attach to the obser-vance of law. It is an established social fact that states big and small do notlike to gain a reputation as law-breakers.

Yet there is another set of reasons, unexamined by the English School, whyeven exceptional states, such as the United States, cannot violate interna-tional law with impunity. In liberal democratic states especially, oppositionparties, NGOs, and the media take a keen interest in legally dubious acts oftheir governments. While a powerful country such as the United States mayhave the luxury of ignoring the negative responses and countermeasuresof other states, its elected government cannot afford to ignore the likelyresponses of interested and potentially troublesome domestic actors. Theselikely responses constitute a big factor in the deliberations of policy-makers.To overlook them would amount to a massive and foolish political gamble.In addition, many liberal democratic countries have judicial review systemswhich enable the legality and constitutionality of the policies and acts ofgovernment to be scrutinised and tested in the courts.61 This is especially thecase in countries where treaties, once ratified, become part of domestic law.



It is of course true that some major Powers (e.g., China) operate withextremely limited domestic restraints due to lack of effective opposition par-ties, an independent media, active and critical NGOs, and an independentjudiciary. For these states it is the likely international reaction, not domes-tic, they will be most worried about when contemplating an act of doubtfullegality. Most liberal democratic states will be worried by both the nationaland international reaction to any such act. It is a significant fact, however,that a Power such as the United States is more likely to be worried and con-strained by the likely reaction of certain important domestic actors than thatof other states.

The cloud of witnesses in the presence of which states conduct them-selves now embraces domestic as well as international actors. Many of theseactors, from Amnesty and Oxfam to Greenpeace and Jubilee 2000, are nowimportantly transnational in their organisation and scope. This is perhapsthe most striking shortcoming of the classic English School’s sociology ofinternational law: the failure to take into account the role of domestic andtransnational actors. The ‘consequential reference groups’ whose expecta-tions and responses states have to take firm note, are no longer—if they everwere—comprised exclusively of states. Compliance with the law can only befully understood by examining the network of domestic, transnational, andinternational restraints that prevail in any given case.

Conclusion: method or anti-method?

In this chapter I have refrained from using the word ‘method’. The reasonis that the English School does not have one. Indeed its whole approachis antipathetic to method. A method suggests the identification and execu-tion of a series of precise steps in order to achieve a specific goal. It makessense to talk of the method one might employ to learn a musical instrumentor a foreign language, of the method employed by economists to calculatethe GDP of a country or its rate of inflation. Method senso stricto suggeststechnique, the mastery of certain technical mental and/or physical movesin order to achieve a practical outcome. In this sense the English Schooleschews method. ‘Approach’ is a much more appropriate term, for it sug-gests a general outlook, the employment of a certain set of concepts, theadvancing of a certain set of propositions, and the assumption of a certainstyle or character of argumentation. The goal is not the acquisition of a skill,or technique, or practical capability. Rather the goal is general understand-ing or a general appreciation of ‘the relation of things’. I remain wedded tothe Manningite notion of connoisseurship: that is, refined judgment bornof familiarity with and feel for a subject. This, rather than objectivity, orscience, is what we should strive for in the pursuit of social understand-ing.62 I have found myself using the term ‘approach’ throughout this chapterbecause this word captures the nature of the English School’s engagementwith the phenomenon of international law. What they attempt to arrive at


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is not technical knowledge, but an appreciation of the nature and characterof international law, what we can reasonably expect of it, and how it relatesto the wider scheme of international relationships.

This being said, if we conceive the notion of ‘method’ loosely as, say,ways and means of proceeding in the making of knowledge-claims, severalexplanatory strategies can be found at work in English School analysis. In hisassertion that international law ‘supports a structure of expectations withoutwhich the intercourse of states would surely suffer an early collapse’, AlanJames, for example, puts forward a functional explanation. In his assertionthat ‘[t]he importance of international law does not rest on the willingnessof states to abide by its principles to the detriment of their interests, but inthe fact that they so often judge it in their interests to conform to it’, HedleyBull puts forward a rational explanation. Manning, by way of contrast, seesobservance of law in terms of social dynamics: regard for legal obligationsis to a large extent a function of the expectations of the relevant referencegroup.

This ties-in with the observation that one of the distinctive features ofthe school is its methodological pluralism.63 At least two methods may beidentified in the English School approach to international law. One is legalpositivism, as identified above. This is concerned to identify what the lawis. The second is aspirational legalism: the identification of soft law andbroad declarations on a variety of moral themes in order to get a handleon where the law is heading. The methodological pluralism of the school isone of its chief assets. Being unencumbered by the need to identify a dis-tinct method, being immune to the pressure—very considerable in somequarters—to adopt a method senso stricto, and being generally unselfcon-scious about methodological issues has enabled the school to provide a richaccount of the relationship between international law and internationalsociety. It is an account that is coherent and accessible, but not at the costof loss of complexity.


1. Alan James, ‘Law and Order in International Society’, in Alan James (ed.), TheBases of International Order: Essays in Honour of C. A. W. Manning (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1973), p. 68.

2. Ibid., p. 68.3. In International Studies this conception is most closely associated with Myers S.

McDougal and the New Haven School (on which more below) and Richard Falkand the World Order Models Project. See, for example, Falk’s monumental study,The Status of Law in International Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1970), esp. chs I–III, X, XV.

4. See David Long, ‘C. A. W. Manning and the Discipline of InternationalRelations’, The Round Table, 94, 378 (2005), pp. 77–96; Peter Wilson, ‘Manning’sQuasi-Masterpiece: The Nature of International Society Revisited’, The Round Table,93, 377 (2004), pp. 755–769.



5. Manning, C. A. W., ‘The Legal Framework in a World of Change’, in Brian Porter(ed.), The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics, 1919–1969 (London: OxfordUniversity, 1972), p. 309.

6. James, ‘Law and Order’, p. 65.7. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (London:

Macmillan, 1977), pp. 133–136. Bull overstated this point. While internationalrules of change, enabling institutions to alter primary rules in the light of chang-ing circumstances, do not exist in any substantial sense, even in Bull’s day rulesof recognition, establishing unambiguously what the rules are, could be found inareas such as the law of treaties, state-succession, and any of the big ‘codification’treaties. Today rules of adjudication, empowering a body to lay down authorita-tively when a law has been broken, can be found in a number of legal instrumentsincluding the European Convention on Human Rights and the Statute of Rome(establishing the International Criminal Court). See Michael Byers, Custom, Powerand the Power of Rules: International Relations and Customary International Law(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 142–146.

8. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 130.9. Ibid., pp. 131–132.

10. James, ‘Law and Order’, pp. 79–80.11. R. J. Vincent notes that international law, for Bull, was like Sir Alfred Zimmern’s

rendering of law for the classical Greek: ‘the formulation of the will of the com-munity . . . an external manifestation of its continuing life’. Law thus illuminatescontinuity but does not itself provide it. In terms of its social instrumentality it is‘a cart, not a horse’. See Vincent, ‘Order in International Politics’, in J. D. B. Millerand R. J. Vincent (eds) Order and Violence: Hedley Bull and International Relations(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 56.

12. James, ‘Law and Order’, p. 80.13. See, for example, Tony Evans, The Politics of Human Rights: A Global Perspective

(London: Pluto Press, 2005).14. Yasuaki Onuma, ‘International Law in and with International Politics: The

Functions of International Law and International Society’, paper presented toIR-International Law seminar, LSE, May 2003, p. 31.

15. Dorothy V. Jones, ‘The Declaratory Tradition in Modern International Law’,in T. Nardin and D. Mapel (eds) Traditions of International Ethics (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 42.

16. James, ‘Law and Order’, p. 77.17. E. H. Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of

International Relations, 3rd edn, ed. M. Cox (London: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 30–31,160–161. Bull labelled these ‘solidarist’ legal instruments as ‘Grotian’ in his sem-inal ‘The Grotian Conception of International Society’, in H. Butterfield andM. Wight (eds), Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Pol-itics (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1966), p. 51. This interpretation hasrecently come under attack. See, for example, Edward Keene, Beyond the Anarchi-cal Society: Grotius, Colonialism and Order in World Politics (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2002), esp. pp. 30–39.

18. James, ‘Law and Order’, p. 65.19. Ibid., p. 66.20. Ibid., p. 67.21. Ibid., p. 67.22. Manning, ‘Legal Framework’, pp. 304–305.


Peter Wilson 187

23. James, ‘Law and Order’, pp. 71–72.24. Manning, ‘Legal Framework’, p. 326.25. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 139.26. Ibid., p. 139.27. Ibid., p. 140.28. Manning, ‘Legal Framework’, p. 322.29. Ibid.30. Ibid., pp. 322–323.31. Ibid., p. 323. For further commentary on this aspect of Manning’s thought,

and his obsession with the Indian seizure of Goa, see Wilson, ‘Manning’sQuasi-Masterpiece’, pp. 2–3.

32. See Bull, ‘Hans Kelsen and International Law’, in Richard Tur and WilliamTwining (eds), Essays on Kelsen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

33. Bull, Anarchical Society, pp. 132–133.34. A principal theme of his ‘Grotian Conception’.35. Manning, ‘Legal Framework’, p. 331.36. Ibid., p. 314.37. Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 157.38. Ibid., p. 127.39. The literature criticising the ethical foundations of international society is exten-

sive. The seminal early work is Charles Beitz, Political Theory and InternationalRelations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). See also Chris Brown, Inter-national Relations Theory: New Normative Approaches (Hemel Hempstead: HarvesterWheatsheaf, 1992); Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘Guardian Angel or Global Gangster:A Review of the Ethical Claims of International Society’, Political Studies, 44,1 (1996); Andrew Linklater, The Transformation of Political Community: EthicalFoundations of the Post-Westphalian Era (Cambridge: Polity, 1998); Tim Dunne,‘Sociological Investigations: Instrumental, Legitimist and Coercive Interpreta-tions of International Society’, Millennium, 30, 1 (2001); Andrew Linklater andHidemi Suganami, The English School of International Relations: A ContemporaryReassessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), esp. chs 4 and 7.

40. See, for example, Terry Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 27–29; Joao Marques de Almeida, ‘Chal-lenging Realism by Returning to History: The British Committee’s Contributionto IR 40 Years On’, International Relations, 17, 3 (2003), pp. 289–294.

41. C. A. W. Manning, ‘Austin To-day: Or “The Province of Jurisprudence”Re-examined’, in W. Ivor Jennings (ed.), Modern Theories of Law (London: OxfordUniversity Press, 1933).

42. See, for example, ‘Grotian Conception’, pp. 51–52.43. This mode of thinking has received its most complete critique in Hidemi Sug-

anami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989). See also his ‘The “Peace Through Law” Approach: ACritical Examination of its Ideas’, in T. Taylor (ed.), Approaches and Theory inInternational Relations (London: Longman, 1978).

44. See, for example, Koskenniemi, From Apology to Utopia: The Structure of Interna-tional Legal Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006 [1989]).

45. Rosalyn Higgins, Problems and Process: International Law and How We Use it(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), p. 2; Rosalyn Higgins, ‘Policy Considerationsand the International Judicial Process’, International and Comparative Law Quar-terly, 17 (1968), 58–59.



46. Higgins, ‘Policy Considerations’, pp. 58–59.47. Higgins, Problems and Process, p. 5.48. Ibid., p. 1.49. Bull, Anarchical Society, p. 160. The most systematic critique of the ‘policy science’

or ‘teleological’ approach of the New Haven school from an English School per-spective is provided by Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States, ch. 8. Seealso Byers, Power of Rules, pp. 207–213.

50. Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations of States, esp. pp. 3–24, 305–324.51. Robert Jackson, The Global Covenant: Human Conduct in a World of States (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 61, 97–129.52. Jackson, Global Covenant, 128–129. See also Nardin, Law, Morality and the Relations

of States, pp. 97–112.53. Nicholas J. Wheeler, ‘The Kosovo Bombing Campaign’, in Cristian Reus-Smit

(ed.), The Politics of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2004).

54. Arthur Watts, ‘The Importance of International Law’, in M. Byers (ed.), The Roleof Law in International Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 14.

55. The foundations for a more thorough-going English School analysis of the rela-tionship between power and international law have been laid by Byers, Powerof Rules, Ch. 2. See also Christian Reus-Smit, ‘Society, Power and Ethics’, inReus-Smit, Politics of International Law, pp. 272–284; Barry Buzan, From Interna-tional to World Society: English School Theory and the Social Structure of Globalisation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 167–176; David Armstrong,‘The Nature of Law in an Anarchical Society’, in R. Little and J. Williams (eds),The Anarchical Society in a Globalized World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006),pp. 125–129.

56. Andrew Hurrell, ‘International Law and the Changing Constitution of Interna-tional Society’, in M. Byers (ed.), The Role of Law in International Politics (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 143.

57. See Tom Farer, ‘The United Nations and Human Rights: Less than a Roar, Morethan a Whimper’, in A. Roberts and B. Kingsbury (eds), United Nations, DividedWorld 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

58. The two English School authors who have done most to take this point for-ward are John Vincent and Nicholas Wheeler. See R. J. Vincent, Human Rightsand International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); andN. J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

59. Onuma, ‘International Law’, p. 24.60. Watts, ‘Importance of International Law’, p. 7.61. Onuma, ‘International Law’, p. 16.62. See C. A. W. Manning, The Nature of International Society (London: Macmillan,

1975 [1962]), pp. xviii, 194–196; Hidemi Suganami, ‘C. A. W. Manning and theStudy of International Relations’, Review of International Studies, 27, 1 (2001),pp. 102–103; Wilson, ‘Manning’s Quasi-Masterpiece’, pp. 764–766.

63. See Richard Little, ‘Neorealism and the English School: A Methodological, Onto-logical and Theoretical Reassessment’, European Journal of International Relations,1, 1 (1995); Timothy Dunne, ‘The Social Construction of International Society’,European Journal of International Relations, 1, 3 (1995); Barry Buzan, ‘The EnglishSchool: An Underexploited Resource in IR’, Review of International Studies, 27, 3(2001).


9Law, Power and the Expansionof International SocietyB. A. Roberson

For the English School, the proof of an international society was to befound in Europe abroad. For the English School, international society wasan actual historical phenomenon. It emerged in Europe at a particular time,and spread through an historical process to other parts of the world, incorpo-rating them into a new widened form of international society, but one thatstill reflected its European origins. The English School saw the post-colonialperiod as one of incorporation, of a bringing in, of diverse peoples into a sin-gle international order of Western-inspired state forms, and Western-inspiredrules, customs, and habits. For them, international society was not a fiction,or a heuristic device, but an actual historical social form, and it was notsuperseded by the post-colonial processes but was spread by them.

From the standpoint of the English School analysis, what was spreadingat first was Europe’s notions of how matters should be organised, partic-ularly financial matters. Expanding outward from Europe of ‘internationalsociety’ into other parts of the world was, first of all, a European model offinancial viability. The state should be able to honour its debts; many pre-colonial states, especially Egypt, had large debts to bondholders in Europe,and did not have processes acceptable to Europe by which these debts couldbe securely paid. European governments, eventually,1 came to back bond-holders and indeed to anticipate them in insisting on a system for therational distribution of local revenues, so that debts could be paid. Thiswas more important than any notion of a centralised, rational, bureaucraticor competent state able to control society, let alone a sovereign state. Butthe insistence on financial prudence would lead to new more rational min-istries in the pre-colonial and colonial state, and would eventually becomean important part of a process of incorporating more rational state formsgenerally.

But the Europeans were not the only agents in the expansion of inter-national society. The recipients had their own agendas that encouragedthe process. In the case of Egypt, what Egypt demanded was, initially, anacceptable legal way of dealing with internal disputes with Europeans. Egypt

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190 Law, Power and the Expansion of International Society

sought a system which would give them that possibility and that wouldprotect them from untoward pressures of the European merchants and con-cessionaires, from whom they had no protection under the capitulations. Itshould be a system, moreover, by which the Europeans would be bound.

A wide range of explanatory routes has been taken by scholars toexplain the modalities of the expansion process. Bull saw it as a processof power spreading from the European cosmopolis to the peripheries.2

Yannis Stivachtis sees it as a form of cultural expansion in which ideas arespread from outside to the inside.3 Colas sees it as a form of capitalist impe-rialism and the reaction as a form of collective resistance. Organised socialmovements in the periphery accommodated themselves to the ‘transition’by ‘contributing to and drawing from the prevailing norms, values andinstitutions of international society’ to confront their former masters.4

Along these routes, many of these thinkers point to different legal phe-nomena involved in the process of transformation from colonial status toa modern state in an international society. Colas, for example, in con-sidering the transformation of Morocco, points to the development of auniform system of provincial administration, as well as a rationalised modeof taxation.5

Many of these developments may be understood as part of a process oflegal reception. Legal reception is the process by which laws are ‘received’into a legal system from outside, transforming it, but also transforming rela-tions between, in the case of a colonial relationship, the colonial state andthe colonial master. Legal reception played a variable role in the expansionprocess—in Egypt, it was central.

The theory of legal reception

The concept of legal reception emerged in 1974, when Alan Watson andOtto Kahn-Freund, in unrelated works, presented competing theories of theviability of legal transplants. Watson had written an important work on thespread of Roman civil law first to southern Europe and eventually to thewhole of France through the legal unification of that country in the 17thcentury.6 Watson observed that law had certain autonomous effects, andthat in general law developed by transplanting; that is, that it did not growfrom within but that the dynamic elements were received from without:he called this ‘borrowing’; he declared that ‘most changes in most systemsare the result of borrowing’.7 Moreover, this was a deliberate process. Itoccurred ‘not because some such rule was the inevitable consequence of thesocial structure and would have emerged even without a model to copy’,but because ‘the foreign rule [law] was known to those with control overlawmaking, and they observed the apparent merits that could be derivedfrom it’.8 It was a conscious process. Watson also insisted that ‘legal rules aredevised by legal jurists, not necessarily or closely responsive to social needs’;9


B. A. Roberson 191

that is, that the rules themselves did not necessarily respect local customs ortraditional social practices. (Kahn-Freund’s counter-argument was that ‘legalinstitutions may be more-or-less embedded in a nation’s life, and thereforemore-or-less readily transplantable from one legal system to another, butnever the less at one end of the spectrum law is so deeply embedded thattransplantation is in effect impossible’.10)

Watson was less interested in the causes of legal borrowing than its occur-rence and its consequences for the legal orders in which law was ‘received’;it was Duncan Kennedy in a series of later articles who outlined some of thecauses. Kennedy identified three major ‘globalisations’ of law, which hadsome common features. First, as a theory, legal borrowing implied a periph-eral status on the part of the recipient. The legal developments in such aperipheral or semi-peripheral system will be heavily influenced by what ishappening in more cosmopolitan ‘centres’. The synthesis, that is, the resultof the process of borrowing, is presented sometimes as playing back into thecosmopolitan centres, at other times as having little influence on them.11

Secondly, legal borrowing points to the effects on a legal system of drawingon different fields and amalgamating them into a single legal system—forexample, in the case of the Middle East, the incorporation of Shari’a law into‘western-style’ legal codes. Or, alternatively, the reorganising or codificationof Shari’a in the pattern of a European legal code.12 Thirdly, legal borrowingchallenges histories of legal development that present them as determinedonly by internal social and economic events. Moreover, it gives some causalpower to the law itself. Kennedy’s position is often associated with ‘legalrealism’ since it implies that the law can have some independent effects,and is not merely a reflection of local social or power conditions.13

The colonial process forms an important part of Kennedy’s theory.Kennedy points out that the colonial powers ‘spread their national ver-sions of classical legal theory directly to their colonies with or withoutcodification’. He also points out that the first global system of interna-tional economic law took form as a result of the growth of world trade andthe infrastructural and primary product investment from the centre to theperipheries. This, in his words, ‘unleashed a process of social change, irre-versible as it has turned out, of the tradition/modernity distinction that stillrules our lives’.14

But what is equally important is the way in which the adaptive processmay also have been chosen by elites in the periphery. Kennedy points outthat ‘selection’ often accompanied ‘imposition’, partly to unite the emerg-ing national elites with their ‘people’ but also to ‘deploy European historicistlegal theory to defend themselves [sic] against European legal hegemony’.The position of the national elites in Kennedy’s theory is critical. ‘Theycould develop their own slightly modified national versions of the civiland commercial codes of the commercially, financially and militarily domi-nant European powers facilitating integration into the world market without



seeing themselves as traitors to their own national constituencies, and theycould work as jurists for their nation’s interests within the structure ofinternational law deploying the norms of sovereign equality and autonomyagainst the great powers.’15 The approach is actor oriented, in that it presentsmany developments as having been deliberately chosen to accomplish someobjective or other, usually to effect some critical social transformation.

Egypt and legal borrowing

In the case of Egypt’s incorporation into international society, legal borrow-ing played a critical role, but in a particular way. It began with a consciousdecision on the part of the Egyptian government to reform an aspect ofthe Egyptian legal system. Having already achieved autonomy within theOttoman Empire, Egypt now embarked upon reform of its judicial systemin a deliberate attempt to achieve greater autonomy as against the Europeanpowers and the ‘capitulations’ system—the system that gave extra-territoriallegal privileges to European traders and communities.16 Moreover, the key toa successful judicial reform, so it was thought, was not only to make Egyptlook more ‘European’ legally speaking but also to persuade the Europeans tobe bound by the new law.

The system that Egypt would introduce was borrowed from Italy andSwitzerland, whose codes were a modernised version of the Napoleonic code,with some reference to the French code. Contract law was influenced by theShari’a, that was placed within a modern court system. A European-stylelegal system for Europeans, known as the Mixed Court system (to han-dle litigation between foreigners and Ottoman subjects), was establishedin 1876, an occurrence which Britain had not opposed and showed littleinterest in shaping. The result was that a continental type of legal systembegan to take root in Egypt. Thereafter, the Egyptian political establishmentconfirmed its commitment to European legal norms by introducing a legalsystem (the Ahliyah Court system—1883) for the entire Egyptian popula-tion similar to that which had been established for the Europeans in mixedcases, thus marginalising the Shari’a. It also attempted to get rid of therights of foreigners to set tariff levels by indicating that Egypt should havethe same legal rights to set its own tariffs as European states. Eventually,the Egyptian authorities would borrow the legal form of the internationalalliance (of equals) to regulate their relations with Britain and would insiston the concomitant right to represent themselves in diplomatic relationsand in international conferences.

When order broke down in Egypt and Britain occupied the country mili-tarily (1882), it did not interfere with the Egyptian government’s initiativesin judicial reform, not out of any desire to ‘modernise’ the country, muchless to bring it the benefits of civilisation, but rather to assure the other greatpowers that its stay in Egypt was only ‘temporary’. When the British did


B. A. Roberson 193

begin to take an interest in judicial reform (and it was not until the early1890s), the aim was essentially to get rid of the capitulations, as well as theMixed Courts, in order to reaffirm Britain’s now pre-eminent position inEgypt. But this, the British government never managed to do. The internallegal reforms, requiring the training of new legal elites, provided the foun-dations for a new claim of not merely legal but also political equality. OnceEgypt shared the same legal norms with the occupying power, it became dif-ficult to see that occupation as anything else than illegal. Once it becameclear that Britain’s occupation was not temporary, Britain began to searchfor ways of legitimating its presence in the country rather than ruling as anoccupying power.

Egyptian strategies and legal processes

How is Egypt’s legal borrowing to be understood? The Egyptian story is oneof deliberate strategies, in which legal devices were used, in some cases tosustain, in other cases to change power relations and to alter the legal formof those relations. To a significant extent, the rationalisation process beganunder Sa’id (1854–1863), who inclined strongly towards Europe and lookedto Egypt being part of Europe. After a brief period of restriction by his prede-cessor, Sa’id reestablished a climate favourable to the Europeans and endedrestrictions on trade in all agricultural production. David Landes, writingabout the influx of Europeans looking for huge profits, denoted the period ofthe 1860s as ‘the Klondike on the Nile’.17 In the final years of Sa’id, the begin-ning of the construction of the Suez Canal (and the cotton boom, fueled bythe American civil war) was an added stimulus to the immigration of Euro-peans. The system of ‘capitulations’, the method of adjudicating disputesamong foreigners, had been extended by Muhammad Ali to aid managementof the foreign presence. By the time of Sa’id, these extensions had becomecustomary practices that weighed heavily on him and his successors, partic-ularly with the growth of the European presence. After the Franco-Prussianwar, the system would come to include the new imperial power of Germany,who won additional capitulations.

It is not precisely known when the first capitulations emerged, but oneof the earliest grants of special privileges to foreign merchants were thosegranted to Pisa in 1154 by the then Egyptian rulers within the ByzantineEmpire. Later utilised by the Ottoman Porte, the capitulations granted toEuropean monarchs regulated trading rights and liberties of their nation-als in the ports of the Ottoman Empire. They gave to the nationals of thegrant-receiving country and those under its protection the right to tradeunimpeded by local laws. By the end of the 18th century, the jurisdictionalprivileges accorded to the Europeans throughout the Ottoman Empire hadbeen extended to include all cases in which they were involved, regard-less of the nationality of the other party. (The French has won such rightsby 1740 and they were extended to the rest of the diplomatic community



through the application of the most-favoured-nation clause.) These prac-tices made the Europeans and their protegees virtually immune from theapplications of local law. Each community was in fact regulated by itsown national law—British law for British traders, French law for Frenchtraders. Accordingly, the various consuls had exclusive jurisdiction in anycivil, commercial or criminal case involving their members, even if theother party were a local. Often, the European powers could not presshome these gains in Egypt, since the Ottoman government had relin-quished effective administrative power in Egypt. Nonetheless, the inabilityof the Egyptian government to have its laws—even simple policing laws—enforced is borne out by the reception of the law of 1857, in which Sa’idtried unsuccessfully to make European consuls enforce Egyptian policeregulations.

After mid-century, there was a growing amount of litigation involvingboth Muslims and foreigners. This was problematic, since there was no legalsystem acceptable to Europeans to deal with this type of case until the arrivalof the Mixed Courts in 1876. The practice developed in which, not the con-sular courts but the local courts had jurisdiction, but only if the consul werepresent during the hearing and acquiesced to the decision. Suits involvingmore than 4000 piastres (a considerable sum), had to be taken to Istanbul,to the Porte; if less, the suit could be heard at the local level in the pres-ence of the consul. Criminal cases seem to have been sometimes treated inthe local courts, but Scott, an important British judge in the Mixed Courts,denied that the British capitulations gave any rights to the local courts overcriminal matters involving a foreigner.18

On the financial side, Sa’id’s European enthusiasms and those of his suc-cessor Isma’il (1863), combined with an inability to judge among investmentopportunities offered by European ‘robber barons’, led to the growth ofEgyptian government indebtedness held by private traders. These tradersappealed, successfully, to their national governments to put pressure on theEgyptian state for regular payments.

In response to this situation, Isma’il’s foreign minister, Nubar Pasha(from 1867) persuaded him that by adopting a new legal code, he wouldhave the possibility of controlling European activities. The strategy wasto set up courts outside the capitulations to deal with litigation betweenEuropeans and Egyptians. (First, however, Nubar Pasha had had to gain fromthe Porte the right of Egypt, an Ottoman province, to make independentarrangements with the Europeans and the right to conduct internal reforms.)Such a system could not be imposed; the Capitulatory Powers would have toagree to it. Accordingly, it would have to be a system in which they wouldhave confidence. In 1872, after a protracted period of negotiation with theCapitulatory Powers, as well as with the Porte, Nubar Pasha hired a Frenchlawyer to draw up the new codes.19 He, in turn, based the new codes ona mixture of French, Italian and Swiss codes; the latter two derived from


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France’s Napoleonic code, but, drawn up later, they were more modern.20 Healso made use of the Shari’a.21

The central point of the reforms was the ‘Mixed Court’ system. This wasa set of special courts that would deal with litigations that arose betweenEgyptians and Europeans, in which both would be dealt with in the samelegal system, under the same laws, and within a system that was ‘Egyptian’and not foreign.22 To increase confidence in the system, the governmentallowed that both European and Egyptian judges could sit on the bench ofthe Mixed Courts. For a brief moment, it seemed that the Courts would besupportive of the government’s position regarding the debt. But this was abrief moment only. The courts, as was to be revealed, were dominated by theEuropean judges who quickly came to read the codes in a manner favourableto the foreign plaintiffs, particularly bondholders, and British and Frenchgovernment demands.23

In consequence of Egypt’s indebtedness, the Khedive was also comingunder direct pressure from the European powers, and in the critical areaof Egyptian revenues. The powers demanded a secure revenue system, even-tually set up in the form of the Caisse de la Debt Public. This established asystem which was to receive Egyptian revenues and distribute payments todebt holders. Half of the revenues of the state were received directly by theCaisse for the payment of Egyptian debts, so long as the Caisse existed, thatis, well into the 1930s. But the British and the French were not satisfied thatthey were controlling the sum of the revenues—they suspected Isma’il ofsiphoning off revenues from the provinces before they reached the Caisse.Eventually, the British and the French would set up the dual control sys-tem (1880).24 This would place a British and a French official directly in theEgyptian cabinet, controlling the finance ministry.

The failure of the Mixed Court system to mitigate the pressures fallingon Ismail’s government led to a new legal strategy and one much morefar reaching than the Mixed Courts. This was the Ahliyah legal system, acivil code, similar to the Mixed Courts code, which was to be applied uni-formly over the whole country. This was not a code between foreigners andEgyptians, but a single code of a ‘European style’ legal system that would beapplied to everyone living within the borders of Egypt. The hope was to setup a single legal order that could potentially absorb the Mixed Courts andthen to hold an international conference with the capitulatory powers, topersuade them to integrate the two.25 The codes that had been drawn up forthe Mixed Courts system were constituted into a new national civil code,with a bit more Shari’a added. The Shari’a courts, which had dealt with themajority of litigation among Egyptians, now handled only personal statusmatters (marriage, divorce etc.). From the point of view of the previous lawregulating relations between Egyptians, the Shari’a had been pushed to themargins. From 1883, a single legal system in the European style, with a seriesof national courts, would be applied to the whole country.



With the establishment of the new Ahliyah, or national courts, Egypthoped to dissolve the Mixed Courts into the new courts as soon as possible,but, again, the agreement of all the capitulatory powers was needed. Havingset up an International Commission for Judicial Reform, a vehicle for thediscussion of judicial reform, composed of all the signatories to the MixedCourts, the Egyptian government attempted a new meeting with the aim ofnegotiating the absorption of the Mixed Courts into the Ahliyah system.26

British power and judicial reform

Prior to the occupation, Britain had scarcely been concerned about the pro-cess of judicial reform. Once in place, it supported the Mixed Court system.However, the comparative unexpectedness of the occupation left Britainwith little or no forward planning concerning its role in Egypt: the NationalAssembly had prevented France sending accompanying French forces, andwithout the French participation, Britain was isolated among the Concertpowers, which looked jealously at the British gain and muttered about com-pensation. On the other hand, there was a lack of internal justification forany long-term British presence. Britain would insist that the occupationwas ‘temporary’ (British forces would remain in Egypt until the Suez crisisof 1956). Baring, eventually Lord Cromer, who would become consul gen-eral, would agonise continuously over the ethical and legal basis of Britain’spresence in Egypt.27 These uncertainties led to ambiguous and equivocalattitudes to judicial reform, including the reform of the Mixed Courts.

Given that Egypt wanted the Ahliyah courts to take over from the MixedCourts, the Ahliyah courts should have represented for Britain a progressivedevelopment of good government in Egypt. Superceding the Mixed Courtswould also limit the influence of the other capitulatory powers—and Britainwanted to protect the prerogatives of the British position as well as thefavoured position of British traders. (Salisbury had expressed concern aboutthe Mixed Courts enhancing the influence of the other powers in Egypt,and he was concerned about internationalisation, which might be encour-aged by the International Commission for Judicial Reform (ICJR).) Now, asan occupying power, the British government had to have a policy in Egyptand more importantly it had to justify the occupation to Parliament. Fromthis point, Britain would, on the one hand, promise that its occupation wastemporary but on the other begin to speak of a ‘civilising mission’ (withouthowever precisely using those terms), and would begin to involve itself evenmore closely in a widened range of Egyptian affairs. The original thrust ofBritish and French policy in Egypt had been financial. Now, however, Britainsent advisors into the justice ministry (and eventually into the ministry ofthe interior in 1892). And Malet, consul general from 1879, would urge theEgyptians to hire foreign judges for the Ahliyah courts, using the justificationthat true reform would be thereby encouraged.28


B. A. Roberson 197

From the Egyptian perspective, the occupation opened up several newprospects, not all of them negative. On the one hand, there is the suggestionthat some in Egyptian authority saw the possibility of using the occupationto remove Egypt from the suzerainty of the Ottoman Porte. Sherif Pasha,prime minister after the occupation, even suggested to Malet that Britainshould be active in freeing Egypt from the Porte, by placing Egypt undera British suzerainty (which, from the Egyptian perspective, promised to betemporary).29 There was also the possibility that occupation might in factspeed up the process of judicial reform and get rid of the capitulations. Malethad suggested that, if the Egyptian authorities put foreign judges in theAhliyah courts, the capitulations might be nullified. In short, Egypt soughtto use the occupation to revise its status, both as a subject of the OttomanPorte and as a subject of European colonialism.

The immediate question concerned the status of the Mixed Courts. Withineight months of the occupation, Sherif had sent a circular to the capitula-tory powers proposing the extension of the Mixed Courts for a further fiveyears.30 This proposal appears to have been consistent with the aim of usingthe occupation to get rid of the relationship with the Porte. If the Euro-pean powers stayed heavily involved in a Mixed Court system, this wouldlessen the legal relationship between Egypt and the Porte. Equally, however,it would also lessen the immediate relationship with Britain. (In response,Britain became a stronger advocate of reducing the role of the Mixed Courtsand absorbing them into the jurisdiction of the Ahliyah system. It alsosimultaneously began to support the ICJR in a somewhat vain attempt toconvince the other Concert Powers that Egypt was not becoming a colony ofBritain.) The other question, which became more pressing after the occupa-tion, was the status of Articles 9 and 11 of the ROJ, the Regulations of JudicialOrganisation. These regulated the Mixed Courts, and were the critical articlesthat undermined Egypt’s internal sovereignty with respect to foreigners.31

Finally, there was the need to expand the Mixed Courts’ jurisdiction to trycriminal cases, still held within the consular courts. The thriving and lucra-tive criminal activity of the foreign community could only be dealt with byextending the jurisdiction of the Mixed Courts to include criminal litiga-tion to which foreigners were a party. Absorbing criminal activity into theMixed Courts was central to the strategy of extending the jurisdiction of theAhliyah courts. If, when the Mixed Courts were absorbed, these courts didnot have jurisdiction over foreign criminal activity, a critical area of regula-tion would be denied to the Egyptian authorities.32 If, moreover, this couldbe accomplished, any new laws enacted by the Egyptian government wouldpass directly into the Egyptian legal system without having to be approvedby the capitulatory powers as was currently the case.

However, Britain’s position in Egypt as an occupying power, even if ‘tem-porary’, worked, paradoxically, against judicial reform. Despite and becauseof the occupation, the other capitulatory powers became determined to



maintain their rights, and they would not agree to the absorption of theMixed Court System. From the time of the occupation, Egypt would succeedonly in minor adjustments to the Mixed Courts, and only those with whichthe capitulatory powers agreed. The courts would only be abolished by theMontreux Convention of 1938, which effectively removed all foreign legalstructures, to take effect in 1949. Where Egypt would succeed was in keep-ing the issue of its dissatisfaction with the Mixed Courts clearly before theBritish authorities and the rest of the capitulatory powers. All subsequentmeetings of the ICJR would reinforce the Egyptian position on the MixedCourts, and would draw constant attention to the iniquities, especially ofArticle 11 of the ROJ.33 The major change which occurred during this periodconcerned the somewhat novel development of the Mixed Appeals Courtinto a form of legislative body, a development which Cromer would oppose,as well as the Egyptian authorities. This occurred because, in the absenceof any body with clear legislative rights in Egypt concerning foreigners, theAppeals Court, which had to decide finally on the application of the law,became in effect a final arbiter of that law. Ismail’s early hope that by estab-lishing a European style cabinet, he would be gaining in effect, legislativepowers, was not fulfilled.

The outbreak of the First World War, with the Ottoman decision to jointhe Axis powers, gave Britain the opportunity to legalise its position in Egypt.It did so with the declaration of a protectorate, which gave sovereigntyto the British Crown, and which made Britain the court of final appeal.Britain also became the guarantor of the legal rights of others in Egypt,including (unfortunately for them) those of the other capitulatory powers.Britain held, in effect, the sovereign power of Egypt. But the title protectorateimplied eventual self-government (and this implication did not escape theEgyptians). Britain continued, also, with indirect rule, not to antagonisethe Egyptians. The protectorate did not give the increased sense of secu-rity that the British had expected (the Egyptians would prove less amenableto British rule because of the protectorate). Nor did it offer any real oppor-tunity to unilaterally set aside the capitulations, the long-term aim of bothEgypt and Britain: the British government was not anxious to disturb itsEuropean allies. The Foreign Office declared it would deal with the capitu-lations after the war. The need was to break the Ottoman–Egyptian link ina way that would cause the least amount of damage to the British–Egyptianrelationship and to Britain’s relationships with its war-time allies.

As the war progressed, pressure grew for a decision on the eventual statusof Egypt. British officials in Egypt began to fear a failure to defeat the Porte,with consequences for Egypt’s largely Turkish ruling elite. There was alsothe increasing radicalisation of the Egyptian public, which was beginningto look for ways to throw off the Protectorate and gain full independence.Originally largely indifferent to the British occupation, the general public,under pressure of war and the demands Britain had to make on the Egyptian


B. A. Roberson 199

economy, was being converted into a national independence movementincreasingly hostile to British control.34 The wider debate among officialcircles in the Foreign Office and War Cabinet veered between annexation,informal empire under British guidance, more thorough penetration viaAnglicising laws, customs and administration, or establishing British con-trol on Indian lines. Support varied for each of these options. A committeecomposed of Balfour, Curzon, and Milner was constituted to consider whichroad to take, and what should be the eventual relationship between Britainand Egypt, although no firm conclusions were to be drawn before the end ofthe war.

Focus turned to the capitulations, an irritant to the British as well as to theEgyptians. As British ascendancy in Egypt grew, British officials came increas-ingly to look upon the capitulations as conduits for unjustified foreigninfluence.35 It was recognised that the Egyptians in an early and long-standing practice used the capitulations to limit British interference. (Also,the Egyptians had used the capitulations to play one power against theothers.) The British intention came to be to revise or abolish the capitula-tions. Several Commissions were set up in Egypt and one in London to studythe kind of judicial and legislative measures that would be necessary if thecapitulations were abolished. These studies made it clear that no increasein self-government was intended: rather, the intention was to remove theavenues of foreign government influence in the Egyptian administration.The Brunyate report recommended a bicameral structure of governmentwith some foreign representation in the upper chamber (the more importantone).36 This would take over the legislative functions that had been vestedwith the Great Powers via the Mixed Courts. It would have an advisoryand amending capacity only. But it would unify the different legal jurisdic-tions in Egypt—the Mixed, the Ahliyah, the consular, religious and personalstatus courts, as well as the Waqf administration (a repository for familyassets). Once judicial reform was undertaken, it had begun to take on a lifeof its own.

The leaking of the Brunyate report in 1918 led to widespread expectationsof major legal and constitutional reform that might even lead to indepen-dence and self-government. This was encouraged by Britain’s associationwith America and the declaration of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points.For the British community in Egypt, a new fear grew that they would beexcluded from any future consideration in Egyptian legislation; among thecommunity there was a general rejection of the idea of Cromerite-style indi-rect rule. For the Egyptians, on the contrary, and somewhat paradoxically,suspicion of Britain increased. Journalists reported an increasing remotenesson the part of British officials.37 This perception may have contributed towidespread disturbances and discontent in the Egyptian population anda sense of the inadequacy of British rule. On 17 November 1918, sixdays after the end of the Great War, three prominent Egyptian lawyers



formed a self-professed delegation and demanded from General Wingate,High Commissioner, complete autonomy, leaving Britain to supervise onlythe canal and Egypt’s still considerable debt. The Prime Minister, Rushdi,requested permission to go to London for talks on the future structure ofthe Protectorate, in the event refused. Subsequent efforts to control politicaldissidence sparked the rebellion of 10 March 1919. On 17 March, the Britishauthorities in Egypt informed the Foreign Office that they had lost controlof Egypt.38

Disorder was put down and the Milner Mission was established. Milner’sterms of reference were to determine the cause of the riots and to satisfyEgyptian sensitivities while devising the future form of a Protectorate thatwould maintain Britain’s interests.39 Maintaining control by the use of forcewas not considered feasible. The riots of 1919 were not like the army revoltof 1882. At the very least, they were much more widespread.

In the course of the Mission’s investigations, Sir Cecil Hurst, the Mission’slegal advisor, reported on the background to the multiplicity of legal juris-dictions in Egypt, on the Brunyate report and the Egyptian responses to it.The responses reported by Hurst included a suspicion that unification of thejurisdictions would introduce foreign influence into the Ahliyah courts inthe manner of the Mixed Courts, the creation of de facto British courts, andeven the ousting of Arabic as a language of the court. (Far from wishing forthe end of the Mixed Courts and the capitulations, the Egyptians now hadbecome afraid of abandoning them, for fear of leaving Egypt alone under amore powerful British imperial rule.) Hurst also commented on the possibleresponses of the foreign powers and doubted that they would agree to puttheir nationals under the jurisdiction of the Egyptian courts. He proposedabandoning legal unification, and simplifying the judicial system, leavingonly the Ahliyah courts and a revised system of Mixed Courts for dealingwith foreigners. By this means, Britain could expect to gain the confidenceof the other capitulatory powers that would recognise Britain’s dominantauthority and defer to Britain in a British area of influence.40 In sum, theMixed Courts had come to represent the continuation of internationalismin Egypt and had become difficult to amend in consequence, because theywere the barometer by which capitulatory privileges were measured. (Theother proposal put forward by Hurst was to rescind or reorganise the 13 dif-ferent consular courts who administered their own national criminal codes.The existence of these courts severely restricted the powers of the Egyptianpolice to make arrests or deal with suspected criminal activity. Hurst madeclear here, as well as with regard to the Mixed Courts, that Britain shouldnot continue with the status quo.) He also ‘assumed that the foreign powerswould agree to transfer their capitulatory rights to Britain’, because it wasnow a British sphere of influence and British arrangements for their ownsubjects could equally also serve as a legal framework for other foreigners.41


B. A. Roberson 201

The treaty solution

With the demise of the Ottoman Empire, and the clear evidence provided bynon-cooperation that the Egyptians had rejected the Protectorate, the legalstatus of Egypt gave increasing concern to Milner. Officially, Britain couldnot decide between a continued protectorate, informal empire or outrightannexation. The Egyptians, in any event, would agree to neither the firstnor the third, and the notion of informal empire did not create confidencein London. The Milner mission returned to London, and Milner, probablybecause he thought the Cabinet would take no action, began a series of pri-vate negotiations with the leader of the Wafd party, the party which hadapproached Wingate to ask for autonomy, if not independence.42 In the pro-cess, Milner accommodated as many of the Egyptian demands as he thoughtwould be acceptable to London. In the light of the legal as well as practi-cal difficulties regarding the protectorate, he began to consider a form of atreaty of alliance between the two countries that would replace the protec-torate. This could take the form of a ‘perpetual alliance’43 but one betweentwo nominally equal partners.

The treaty proposal had features attractive to both sides. Such a treatywould give to the British government everything that Britain in the endactually required. This would include a permanent military presence, con-trol of the canal, maintenance of key advisors, control of the police, andpre-eminence of the British representative over other foreign representativesin Egypt. Finally, as protector of foreign rights, Britain would work to end thecapitulations. The Mixed Courts would continue requiring a British judicialadvisor in the Ministry of Justice, but, finally, criminal jurisdiction wouldbe added to the Mixed Courts. Sa’ad Zaghlul, the leader of the Wafd, agreedto gaining perhaps nominal independence but also, more importantly, thedefinitive end of the protectorate. Each agreed to recommend the treaty pro-posal to their respective sides, Milner to the British Government and Zaghlulto the Egyptians.

In Milner’s justification to Curzon, several points stand out. First, he pre-sented the alliance in terms of a basis for a continued British presence whichwas treaty based rather than based on a questionable occupation. It wouldbe based moreover on ‘other grounds that the necessity of keeping Egypt inorder’. In sum, the Egyptians would be signing up to an alliance in whichthey would be autonomously agreeing, in the event, to a military base and apermanent military presence. An alliance, in short, would give the Egyptiansthe outward sign of independence. The ‘weak point’, he felt, ‘was in accord-ing to Egypt the right of foreign diplomatic representation abroad’. In hiswords, ‘he only assented with the greatest reluctance but it is also just thepoint about which the Egyptians care most’.44

Eventually something along those lines was to be agreed, but only after aninterval during which a less generous route was tried. The alternative route



was occasioned by the consternation of the British Cabinet over Milner’sadvice, which it took to be virtual disengagement. Milner’s proposal wastemporarily shelved, and Curzon was instructed to negotiate with Ali Pashaalong lines recommended by General Allenby, then High Commissioner.Allenby’s advice was similar to Milner’s, that is an alliance among twoparties, but without Egyptian rights to self-representation. Ali Pasha’s refusalput Allenby ‘in an impossible position’.45 In the event, and perhaps becausehe was a military man more concerned with strategic realities than theromance of empire, the High Commissioner recommended that Britainabandon the Protectorate. Helped by increased rioting in Cairo, the Cabinetgave into Allenby’s position on 16 February 1922. It drafted a UnilateralDeclaration of Independence that contained four reserved points: securityof communication, namely the Suez Canal, defence of Egypt against foreignattack or interference, protection of foreign interests and foreign minoritiesin Egypt, and British control of the Sudan.46

As a result of the Unilateral Declaration, Egypt had become a nominallyindependent state. In 1923, a group of Egyptian lawyers proposed a consti-tution that was signed, reluctantly, by the new King Fuad. Modeled partlyon that of Belgium, it established a Parliament with legislative powers anda Cabinet. But it was a somewhat anomalous independence. The Declara-tion of Independence did not have the initial agreement of the Egyptians.Britain retained advisors in the Justice Ministry, in the Finance Ministry, aBritish head of police and a Britain as head of the Parquet, the equivalentof the Crown Prosecution Service. The Mixed Courts were still there. Thecapitulations were still in place; that is, foreign powers continued to havespecial rights within the Egyptian legal system, which continued to qualifyEgyptian sovereignty.

Between 1922 and 1936, when a treaty of alliance would finally be signed,the British Government arrogated to itself special rights for protecting itsinterests in Egypt. These included the four reserved points. But it did notsucceed in dislodging the other foreign powers. Britain had offered to guar-antee the interests of the 17 capitulatory powers in return for passing overtheir extraterritorial rights to Britain.47 But the proposal was not agreedto by these powers. The Egyptians were allowed to negotiate with foreignpowers, including the capitulatory powers, but they could not negotiatein areas affecting the four reserve points. The foreign power in these areaswould have to negotiate directly with Britain. Periodically, discussion wouldensue between the British Foreign Office and the Egyptian authorities on‘the desiderata’, as the Foreign Office began to refer to issues of judicialreform.

But the growing Egyptian nationalist movement was by now well-schooled in the ‘desiderata’ of legal reform and would brook no ambiguitywith regard to the Mixed Courts. They would scupper any British attemptto establish a legal order that would preserve British interests while limitingthe ‘interference’ of any other European powers in Egyptian affairs. A covert


B. A. Roberson 203

symbiosis became apparent between the Egyptian government and the risingnationalist movement. Increasingly, the Egyptian government’s demands ofBritain hardened and became more focused on the formal sovereignty issue.The Egyptian government would decline to participate in any way in the50th anniversary celebrations of the Mixed Courts, because they constitutedan infringement of Egypt’s sovereignty.48

Since Milner’s initial proposal of 1923, a treaty of alliance had been dis-cussed on and off, and there was a 1930 draft, in the drafting of whichEgyptians had participated. But the seizure of Abyssinia, in 1935, made theissue suddenly critical to the British authorities. (Two Italian divisions hadbeen moved to Libya.) In the event, the new negotiations were to be muchtougher, with Egyptian attention directed to full internal sovereignty. Theliberal constitutionalist, Muhammad Mahmud, proposed an exchange ofthe military provisions for complete abandonment of the capitulations; thatis, Britain could have the Canal Zone for a specified period if it agreed tothrow its diplomatic weight behind a conference aimed at the ending ofthe capitulations.49 In 1936, a new draft was agreed, in which Article 3 ofthe preliminary draft treaty of 1930 was incorporated into the new draftas Article 12. This article set out a plan by which Egypt would abolish thecapitulations and afterwards the Mixed Courts, after assuming the jurisdic-tion of the councillor courts. It was regarded as a clear commitment onthe part of Britain to support Egypt in any negotiations with the capitu-latory powers. In a secret memo from Eden to the Cabinet of 4 March 1936,he wrote that ‘His Britannic Majesty recognised that the responsibility forthe lives and property of foreigners in Egypt devolves exclusively upon theEgyptian government who will ensure the fulfillment of their obligations inthis respect.’50

As a result of the 1936 treaty between Britain and Egypt, there was con-vened the Montreux Convention, a meeting of Egypt, Britain, and the other16 capitulatory powers. Egypt formally hosted the convention as a full inter-national personality, albeit backed by Britain. All the capitulatory powers,including the French—the most insistent on their capitulatory rights—agreed to participate. Egypt set out the conditions under which it woulddeal with the former capitulatory states. It announced a proposal to abolishthe capitulations and a time table for the gradual elimination of the MixedCourts over a 11-year period.51 Under Britain’s influence, the 16 powers allagreed to abandon their capitulatory rights. No longer would their nationallaws apply in Egypt to their nations. The Mixed Courts remained but for aclearly delimited period. In 1949, the special juridical rights of foreigners inEgypt ended.

Conclusion

Egypt’s embarkation upon the reform of its judicial system brought Egyptinto elaborate international negotiations with the European powers. The



success of these negotiations resulted in Egypt introducing a European legalsystem (1876) for Europeans—the Mixed Court system. The result was thata continental type of legal system began to take root in Egypt. The Egyptianpolitical establishment confirmed this commitment to European legal normsby introducing a legal system (the Ahliyah Court system) for the Egyptianpopulation as a whole similar to that which had been established for theEuropeans in Egypt, thus marginalising the Shari’a. When order broke down,Britain occupied the country militarily. Initially indifferent, Britain thenbegan supporting the Egyptian government initiative in judicial reform, pri-marily as a means of limiting channels of other great power influence inEgypt. As the occupation proceeded, Britain attempted to preserve its inter-est by searching for ways of legitimating its presence in the country ratherthan ruling as an occupying power.

While initially the legal approach taken by Egypt had been somewhat dis-appointing in that it did not contribute to a more autonomous relationshipvis a vis the Europeans, eventually the use of European legalities becamean Egyptian technique for dealing with Britain, as well as with the otherpowers. While wanting to be rid of the international legal constraints oper-ating on them through the Mixed Courts and Capitulations, Egyptians didnot show any interest in abandoning the modified European law itself. Theywanted what it offered them both internally and externally: internally,—modernising and managing the activities of the foreigners in commerceand trade; externally, acquiring autonomy within the Ottoman Empire aswell as attempting greater control of their trading relations with the rest ofthe world. While Britain searched for ways to find a legal formula that theEgyptians would accept which would leave Britain in ultimate charge of keyareas in Egypt, the Egyptians were looking for ways through the same meansto deny this to Britain without resort to violence.

As the Egyptian political elite matured in the course of the British occu-pation, it had absorbed the European norms not only for constituting thedomestic arena in Egypt, but also it long since had understood the impor-tance of the diplomatic rules of the game and requirements of behaviour inthe international arena. The British, as well as the Europeans, through theirbelief in the values of imperialism, pursued a course of action in Egypt ofexpecting the Egyptian elite to recognise and accept an inferior relationshipwhich, in the end, could only be maintained through force. The Egyptiangovernment and political elite ultimately pursued a consistent policy of gar-nering autonomy within the Ottoman Empire. However, when Europeansbegan to impinge upon these gains in autonomy, a strategy was pursuedby the Egyptians of emulating and absorbing the crucial legal norms thatunderpinned the successful European model in both internal and externalarenas.

After the Ottoman Empire, with neither the British nor the Egyptiansable to force their ultimate aims upon each other, the British pursued anegotiating strategy based upon achieving a legal outcome which would


B. A. Roberson 205

secure its vital interests in Egypt which it believed depended upon Egyptlegally accepting British rights in Egypt. The Egyptians, on the otherhand, pursued both a political (nationalist) and a legal strategy in whichthe British were not allowed to be free of the powers in the back-ground and in which the power of the army of occupation was notsufficient to be able to achieve Egyptian acceptance of a legal dependenceon Britain. In the end, Egypt accepted, in the 1936 Treaty of Alliancewith Britain, the requirements of the military clauses in exchange forBritain’s commitment to the abolition of the Capitulations and ultimatelythe Mixed Courts system—confirmed in the Montreux Convention of1937.

In summary, with the gradual, then rapid, absorption into Egypt of Euro-pean legal norms, an Egyptian legal class trained in French law developed.Diplomatic dialogue involving Egypt in diplomatic protocols brought Egyptcloser to internalising the legal norms of international society. Though theEgyptian government was held to the observance of the requirements of theMixed Courts treaty, in time, not only the Egyptian government came toadhere to these common rules expressed in this international institution, theEgyptian political elite came to expect, particularly in the 20th century, thesame rights and obligations of a sovereign state in the international systemand to be a part of international society of states. Persuading the Europeanpowers and, in particular, the British government to make this adjustmentin their relations with Egypt—through the elimination of the Capitula-tions and the recognition that Europeans would be subject to the law andorder established by the Egyptian government within its own territory—begins to take shape in the 1920s and 1930s and is only completed inthe 1950s.

It is often supposed that the standards of civilisation were ‘imposed’by the imperialist powers on their conquests. In the case of Egyptthe opposite maintains. The British were not particularly interested inany general standard of civilisation. What they wanted was that Egyptshould pay its debts to British bond holders. It was Egyptian elites whobegan the process of introducing European legal norms into Egyptianlaw, and who relentlessly pursued this strategy, until all of Egypt hadfallen under the sway of European-style law, and until all of the Egyp-tian legal system was under Egyptian sovereignty, excluding all foreigncontrol.

By the time of independence, Egypt had acquired the legal norms of inter-national society, the acquis communitaire of international law and the legalappurtenances of the UN membership, had developed patterns of inter-nal and external relations that conformed to international value systemsand had become a player in its own right in international politics. Whatlegal borrowing as a theory implies is that the researcher should watchthe work that legal concepts are doing and the sources from which theycome.




1. British government policy had been to remain aloof from coming to the assis-tance of businesses or individuals who had made poor judgments in investingin insecure situations; Derby to Stanton, 23 May 1876, telegram, FO 407/9. See,for example, the statement of British policy regarding the refusal to supportBritish investments in foreign countries and in foreign governments, Hammondto Mr Hyde Clark, 26 April 1871 in Hammond to Lyons, 29 April 1871, no. 318,FO 146/1519.

2. Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, (eds), The Expansion of International Society(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) pp. 1–7.

3. International Society: Culture Versus Anarchy and Greece’s Entry Into InternationalSociety (London: Macmillan, 1988).

4. Alejandro Colas ‘International Society ‘From Below’: Civil Society and the Expan-sion of International Society’, Paper presented at the Pan-European InternationalRelations Conference, University of Kent at Canterbury, 9 September 2001.

5. Colas, p. 8.6. Watson notes that universities originated in Italy with the teaching of Roman

civil law.7. Watson, Legal Transplants (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1974), p. 20.8. ‘Comparative Law and Legal Change’, Cambridge Law Journal 37 (1978), p. 315.9. ‘From Legal Transplants to Legal Formats’, Am. J. Comp. Law 43 (1995), p. 469.

10. Kahn-Freund, ‘On the Use and Misuse of Comparative Law’ Modern Law Review 37(1974).

11. Duncan Kennedy, ‘Three Globalizations’, Paper given at Harvard Law School,2003. Kennedy argued that America had a peripheral status up to the 1930s andthat the American ‘synthesis’ had little effect on subsequent developments inFrance or Germany which had originally been very influential in the Americanlegal system; p. 5.

12. The Ottoman Majelle of the Tanjimat reforms; S. Mahmasani, Philosophy ofJurisprundence in Islam: Comparative Study of the Islamic Rites and Modern LegalSystems (Beirut: Dar al-ilm lil Malayin, 1975).

13. Duncan Kennedy’s article has been published in Suffolk University Law Review,xxxvi, (2003), pp. 631–679, as ‘Two Globalizations of Law and Legal Thought:1850–1968’. The full version appears in D. Trubek and A. Santos, (eds), New Lawand Economic Development: A Critical Appraisal (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2006).

14. ‘Three Globalisations’, pp. 8–9.15. Ibid., pp. 11–12.16. Maurits H. Van Den Boogert, The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System: Qadis,

Consuls and Beraths in the 18th Century (Leiden: Brill, 2005).17. Bankers and Pashas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958).18. J. H. Scott, The Law Affecting Foreigners in Egypt (Edinburgh: Wm.Green & Sons,

1907).19. B. A. Roberson, ‘The Emergence of the Modern Judiciary in the Middle East:

Negotiating the Mixed Courts of Egypt’, in Islam and Public Law: Classicaland Contemporary Studies ed. C. Mallat (London: Graham and Trotman, 1993),pp. 107–139; Maitre Manoury from Alexandria in Mark S. W. Hoyle, Mixed Courtsof Egypt, (London: Graham & Trotman, 1991), p. 15.

20. The new codes included a civil code, penal code, maritime code.


B. A. Roberson 207

21. Law of property, co-ownership in multi-occupation, water rights, windows over-looking women’ quarters and other Islamic rules, grave deception, hidden defects,sale with the power of redemption, loans, ban against sale of future crops, riskof loss or damage remaining on the vendor in certain circumstances, giving abuyer reasonable time after sale agreement to reject goods, legacies; Hoyle, MixedCourts, p. 18.

22. Hoyle, Mixed Courts, p. 19.23. Roberson, ‘Emergence of the Modern Judiciary’.24. C. Rivers Wilson, Chapters from My Official Life (London: Edward Arnold, 1916);

Rivers Wilson was a member of the Dual Control Ministry.25. Granville to Lyons, 29 September 1881, in the context of reporting Malet’s advice

to El, Fakri, head of Egypt’s judiciary; No. 943, Confidential, PRO 30/29/294.26. It should be recalled that the capitulations were granted by the Ottoman govern-

ment, and covered all of the Ottoman Empire, and that the Egypt, still a provinceof the Ottoman Empire, did not have the right to set them aside.

27. Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 Vols (London, 1908).28. Malet pressed continuously for judicial reform, to balance the strong leadership

he believed Egypt required, see, for example, Malet to Granville, 5 September1882, PRO 30/29/160.

29. Malet, reporting to Granville, 12 October 1882, Secret Telegram, PRO 30/29/160.30. The Mixed Courts were established for 5 years, to be renewed at 5 years intervals.31. Article 9 gave exclusive jurisdiction on all matters concerning foreigners to the

mixed courts.32. Sherif to Malet, 30 June 1883, in Malet to Granville, 2 July 1883, No. 274, PRO

30/29/287.33. Article 11 failed to distinguish between administrative measures and sovereign

acts, leaving to the Mixed Court judges the power to determine this critical ques-tion; they in turn, dominated by European judges, tended to treat all measuresas ‘sovereign acts’, and hence legislation requiring the agreement of the capitula-tory powers. But, in effect, it was the Mixed Court judges who were exercising thelegislative function.

34. D. Walker, ‘Mustafa Kamil’s Party: Islam, Pan-Islamism and Nationalism’ Islamand the Modern Age 11 (1980), pp. 230–293 and 12 (1981), pp. 1–43.

35. The British were unhappy about the influence the capitulations gave to foreignpowers from the moment of their entry into Egypt, but it became a seriousanomaly after the establishment of the Protectorate; B. A. Roberson Judicial Reformand the Expansion of International Society: The Case of Egypt ( PhD London Schoolof Economics, 1998), Chapter 5, p. 289.

36. William Brunyate, ‘Note on Constitutional Reform in Egypt’, Secret, EgyptianGovernment, Cairo,1918, FO 848/18.

37. Willian Brunyate was the Acting Financial and Judicial Advisor to the Egyp-tian government from 1916. On Brunyate, see P.G. Elgood, The Transit of Egypt(London, 1928), pp. 233–234; Lloyd, op.cit., Vol. I, pp. 275–276; Mr Bridgemanat Board of Trade to Curzon, 21 May 1919, MSS. Eur. F. 112/259; Marshall,op.cit., pp. 78–79, 81. Brunyate, ‘Note on Constitutional Reform in Egypt’, secret,Egyptian Government, Cairo, 1918, FO 848/18.

38. Cheetham to Foreign Office, Telegram, Very Urgent, 17 March 1919, FO371/3714/42905; Wingate to Lord Hardinge, 14 November 1918, FO 848/2;Zaghlul et al had gone to see Wingate two days after the armistice and Brunyate’sreport came a day later. Note on Constitutional Reform by Sir W. Brunyate,



18 November 1918, enclosed in Wingate to Balfour, secret, 24 November 1918,Docs. collected for the information of the Special Mission appointed to enquireinto the situation in Eg. (DCSM), Vol. II, p. 16, Milner Papers 162.

39. Milner to Curzon, 25 April 1919, MSS.Eur.F. 112/259.40. Sir Cecil Hurst, ‘Jurisdiction in Egypt’, 29 December 1919, FO 848/4.41. Ibid.42. Milner, The August Memorandum, 18 August 1920, FO 848/20; the talks were

‘feelers’ not negotiations; see also Meeting at the Colonial Office, 21 June 1920;meeting with the Egyptian delegates 22 June 1920, FO 848/20.

43. Memo, Milner to Zaghlul, ‘Some Heads of a Proposed Agreement’, 13 July 1920,FO 848/25.

44. Milner to Curzon, 11 August 1920, very confidential, ff.120–30, MSS. Eur.F.112/217.

45. Allenby to Curzon, 24 December 1921, No.686, political, decode, urgent,MSS.Eur.F.112/262, where he reports nightly rioting, and his inability to controlthe situation.

46. Appendix 1: Draft Declaration to Egypt, 16 February 1922, in Cabinet 10 (22),16 February 1922, Secret, MSS.Eur.F.112/262.

47. Sir Cecil Hurst had devised, with a committee of judges and lawyers in Alexandriain 1920, a scheme by which the criminal jurisdiction of the consular courts wouldbe made subordinate to the Mixed Courts ‘under increasing British control’,together with all litigation between foreigners of the same nationality. The for-eign powers would pass to Britain their capitulatory powers regarding legislation;Lloyd to Chamberlain, 15 May 1927, No. 302, J1357/637/16, FO 371/12384.

48. Henderson to Chamberlain, 7 February 1926, J398/398/16, No. 66, FO 371/11605.49. Mahmoud Zayid, Egypt’s Struggle for Independence (Beirut: Khayats, 1965),

pp. 168–169.50. Extract from Cabinet conclusions 14 (36) of 4 March 1936, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty

negotiations: The Protection of Foreigners, J2027/2/16, FO 371/20101.51. British Yearbook of International Law (London: Oxford University Press),

pp. 161–197.


10The Limits of Progress:Normative Reasoning in theEnglish SchoolJames Mayall

I must begin with a confession. I am a reluctant methodologist.1 Indeed,it seems to me that the English School serves its method when it wears itlightly. Stanislavski, who inspired the method school of acting, has moreto offer on this score I believe than armies of theoretical social scientists.He advised his actors to provide a truthful representation of those theyportrayed not only by studying their lives, characters and beliefs, but alsoby looking deeply into themselves to find emotional and psychologicalexperiences as points of identification. In most human activities, the mostthat one can aspire to is honesty, to be true to one’s experience of theexternal world, and to the understanding one can arrive at through itsstudy, combined with such intuitive insights that can be gained throughintrospection.

For human beings, who are themselves subject to all kinds of differentcultural and environmental conditioning, and whose memories notoriouslyplay tricks on them as they grow older, to aspire to be true to experienceis to set the bar very high. If this is true of our own lives, it must be dou-bly so when we seek to represent something as complex as the social andpolitical world of international relationships. One is almost bound to makemistakes of both fact and interpretation, for the simple reason that nei-ther facts nor the interpretative gaze we turn on them ever stay still. Thebest that one can hope for is a report on work in progress, which willcontinue to throw a sliver of light on the way the world looked at thetime that it was written. The book under review, whose normative archi-tecture I have been asked to restore, was written nearly a decade ago.2

Much has happened in the intervening years, so that if I was to rewriteit now there would be corrections and reinterpretations to be made. ButI think it unlikely that my normative approach—and its central belief thatthere are limits to the possibility of political progress—would be likely toalter.

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210 The Limits of Progress

The foundations of the argument

Why should this book be regarded as an argument in the English Schooltradition, and why may it be regarded as a normative argument? It was con-ceived in the English School tradition in the obvious sense that it arguesfrom a society of states position. Like other works within the tradition it isprimarily concerned with practice, not theory; that is, with the way the soci-ety of states has been understood. It is also a normative argument, in thatI have tried to evaluate various claims made for how international society isevolving and the choices its evolution presents to us.

There are two senses of normative, often confused in discussion of theEnglish School. One is normative in the sociological sense of discerning thenorms or practices of a particular society; that is, an essentially descriptive oranthropological exercise. The other is normative in the philosophical senseof determining the right or the good or the proper form of action. My studyexamines the normative in both senses of the term, but its main purpose inusing the former is to make an argument about the latter. In other words, indescribing the practice of contemporary international relations, it seeks tooffer a normative critique of this practice. The main reason for operating inthis way is that it corresponds to how we normally discuss the world aroundus. Our moral preoccupations are normally embedded in everyday speechand the stories we tell to make sense of our lives. In the second part of thischapter, I will attempt to illustrate this claim by reference to the three centralthemes discussed, which deal respectively with sovereignty, democracy andintervention.

Before doing so, let me try to locate the argument in its broader intellec-tual setting. Like most English School works, it belongs to the tradition ofEnglish empiricism from Locke to Hume. Empiricists were originally knownfor their rejection of metaphysics, not to mention the miraculous, in theexplanation of events, but more recently for not starting with abstract the-ory. As I understand it, empiricism involves not arguing beyond experienceand observation; it attaches importance to the roles of sense and perceptionin the formation of ideas; and of causal connections in their fixing and legiti-mation. It also employs causal inference to provide us with an understandingof events beyond our immediate perceptions.

Acknowledged or not, Hume’s understanding of history is probably centralto any English empiricist and certainly underpins the view of the state sys-tem presented in Progress and its Limits. History was for Hume the laboratoryof the understanding and the source of the experience on which we buildpresent knowledge. It was also to be understood as a narrative, made up ofloosely causal links. In his historical writing, Hume distinguished betweenphysical and moral causes. Moral causes were defined as ‘all circumstanceswhich are fitted to work on the mind as motives or reasons, and whichrender a peculiar set of manners habitual to us.’ Amongst these, Hume


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mentioned ‘the nature of government, the revolutions of public affairs, theplenty or penury in which the people live, [and significantly] the situationof the nation with regard to its neighbours’ as examples of moral causes.3

His method meant selecting the events worth being narrated, understand-ing their inner dynamics and presenting them in a comprehensible way.Hume’s interest in historical causation was always bound to his attempt tograsp the rationale of the development of English, Anglo-Scottish and Britishcivil society. There is no reason, however, why this method should not beapplied to international, as to any other society.

By historical writing, Hume did not mean what we would regard as apurely technical history. First of all, according to Hume history writing orig-inates within what we would today understand as a culture (as it derivesfrom the ‘conversation and books of travellers and historians’). Secondly,history takes the shape of a field characterised by many relationships. InHume’s account of his own historiography, he lists between Rome and theglobe; between politics, religion and manners; between rises and declines;and finally, between the historian’s conception of his subject and what hehas learnt in the writings of other authors. Finally, the ideas that we acquireabout history, which Hume distinguished from the mere past, are ‘noth-ing but ideas’. However, their very connection (‘arising from . . . the relationof cause and effect’), combined with the continuity of witnesses, rendersthem different from mere ‘offspring of the imagination’.4 That they areculture-bound does not make them unreliable.

One of the lessons Hume wanted to stress was the prevalence of unin-tended consequences; that is, unplanned, contingent and fortuitous out-comes. The History of England abounds in explanations founded on theprinciple of unintended consequences. According to Hume the importanceof history consisted in the fact that it showed ‘the great mixture of accident,which commonly concurs with a small ingredient of wisdom and foresight’.5

Among the forms of unintended consequences, Mandeville’s argument of‘private vices, publick benefits’, destined to play a critical role in the thoughtof Hume’s friend, Adam Smith, stands out. According to Hume, the increaseof industry and the growth of a social class devoted to commerce emerged inthe context of the demise of the feudal barons and the attendant rise of theCommons, in effect a non-intentional process.6 The acknowledgment of thepresence of unintended consequences was also connected to the traditionalrecognition of a disproportion between the factors leading to an event andits far-reaching consequences.

The influence of Burke on the argument

Empiricism is often confused with positivism but they are not the same.Empiricism is an epistemology—an account of the status of knowledge. Pos-itivism is a method—a way of organising material and judging its validity.



As a method, positivism is a scientific model for verification of hypotheses,primarily by testing, and is concerned with what is sometimes termed theo-retical reasoning, or the understanding of objective events. The method usedin this work is not like that at all. It is concerned with practical reasoning,a way of arguing in which different outcomes are assessed and which hasconsequences for action. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy definespractical reasoning in the following manner:

Practical reason, by contrast, takes a distinctively normative question asits starting point. It typically asks, of a set of alternatives for action noneof which has yet been performed, what one ought to do, or what it wouldbe best to do. It is thus concerned not with matters of fact and their expla-nation, but with matters of value, of what it would be desirable to do. Inpractical reasoning agents attempt to assess and weigh their reasons foraction, the considerations that speak for and against alternative coursesof action that are open to them.

My form of practical reasoning involves understanding the historical devel-opment of a set of practices and unpacking their inner relationships.Specifically, it advances by the evaluation of opposed and contradictoryclaims. In considering the claims of solidarism, for example, I set up twoarguments about the evolution of the current state system and demonstratethat both sets of claims are exaggerated, in the light of a previous analysis ofthe system. The underlying argument is that it is up to those who advanceradical claims, of one sort or another, to prove their case, in the face of asystem whose benefits, as well as flaws, are knowable.

This form of argument resembles that of Edmund Burke. Burke oftencombined identification of relations or connections in Hume’s sense, withrelevant history, and treatment in language that would attach positive atti-tudes to one side or the other in a difference of opinion. This method is seen,for instance, in his Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770). Itscentral statement is that the British constitution had been constructed in amanner that required the interdependence of the parts of the sovereign—in other words the monarch acting in and through parliament—in orderto achieve mutual control. This statement contrasted with the historicalstatement that there was a new system of court politics which involveddisconnecting those parts in order to make the king independent. Burke’shistory showed the emergence of this new system, illustrating its perniciousresults for both domestic and foreign affairs.

The contrast in Burke’s account between the older system—which wasrepresented as having benign results—and the new system of court poli-tics was clear, and the direction of his own advocacy obvious. It suggestedthe appropriateness of combining to counterbalance the efforts of court


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politicians, so as to sustain parliamentary sovereignty and its benefits, whichrepresent ‘the good’. Burke combined philosophical method and philosoph-ical history to form an understanding of politics which was practical in thesense of calling for activity in one direction to counterbalance forces comingfrom another.

The picture of the older order was reinforced by a sense of Aristotelianconnection that Burke’s society recognized and approved—that man wassociable, rather than being a solitary beast. Burke was able to attach thekey elements that constituted those ‘connections’ to the side of the disputethat he favoured. In my view, the English School understanding of interna-tional society reflects this notion of connection as applied to internationalrelations—indeed, international society is the name given to the institutionsof sociability among states—and I willingly acknowledge the use I make ofthose connections in my arguments.

But Burke’s appeal was also, it seems to me, to the standards that his con-temporaries would take for granted, namely those implied in their beliefsabout parliamentary sovereignty. My own appeal is not dissimilar. I arguethat the practices that underlie international society, like the practices thatunderlay the British constitution, not only have their inner connections,which are understood. I believe that they are also valued.

Reprise

The study is constructed in terms of two overlapping historical narratives.There is the history of the Westphalian order as it has evolved through themodernisation of the European states system. Secondly, there is the his-tory of the contemporary system, dated conventionally from 1989 andthe collapse of the Cold War order, which has raised various claims aboutwhat ought to be done to reform international order. These claims con-cern, centrally, sovereignty, democracy and intervention. In this section, Ihave attempted to evaluate each of the claims in the light of the historicalevolution of the system.

The book opens by confronting an optimistic argument often encounteredin the period immediately after the end of the Cold War. This view, whichI term the ‘new solidarism’, held that there was no further need for princi-ples of ideological coexistence and that it would now be possible to create aglobal community grounded on the principles of human solidarity. This isan attractive vision, but before Articles 2.4 and 2.7 of the UN Charter—bothof which protect the member states from outside interference—are rejected,it seems sensible to reflect on the enduring principles of the system, and thereasons for them—the ‘connections’ as expressed by Hume. Since his viewsare so important to the way my own argument develops I will quote him atsome length.



He begins his discussion of the Law of Nations by discussing the problemthat arises from treating the State as a person:

. . . and indeed this assertion is so far just, that different nations, as wellas private persons, require mutual assistance . . . But . . . as they are very dif-ferent in other respects, no wonder they regulate themselves by differentmaxims, and give rise to a new set of rules, which we call the Law ofNations. Under this head we may comprise the sacredness of the per-sons of ambassadors, the declaration of war, the abstaining from poisonedarms, with other duties of that kind, which are evidently calculated for thecommerce that is peculiar to different societies.7 (My italics)

Hume is also clear that although the laws of nature apply to all men, rulesbetween separately constituted states also perform a vital function in makingcooperation possible:

. . . the three fundamental rules of justice, the stability of possession, itstransference by consent, and the performance of promises, are duties ofprinces as well as of subjects. The same interest produces the same effectin both cases. Where possession has no stability, there must be perpet-ual war. Where property is not transferred by consent, there can be nocommerce. Where promises are not observed there can be no leagues, noralliances.8

Sovereignty

Much of the debate over the reform of international society has been con-cerned with the alleged need to qualify the absolute nature of the conceptof sovereignty. The debate was opened by the then Secretary General of theUnited Nations, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in the Agenda for Peace, the docu-ment commissioned by the Security Council at its first ever summit meetingin 1992.9 Although he insisted that the State must remain the foundationstone of international society, he went on to explain that ‘the time of abso-lute and exclusive sovereignty has passed’; and indeed that ‘if every ethnic,religious or linguistic group claimed state-hood, there would be no limitto fragmentation and . . . well-being of all would become evermore difficultto achieve’. The way to resolve the rival claims of sovereignty and self-determination, he suggested, was via democratisation at all levels of socialexistence, that is, ‘in communities, within states and within the communityof states’.

My own response to these somewhat high-minded pronouncements wasto ask what more could be sensibly said about the relationship betweennationalism and self-determination? I tried to answer my own question byadvancing two arguments. The first was that there is not, and cannot be, any


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final answer, because the meaning of both concepts is contested and can beshown to have changed over time. This process must be expected to con-tinue since, contrary to what Francis Fukuyama may have thought at thetime, there is no evidence that history has come to an end.10 The secondargument is that, despite this indeterminacy, a conventional understandingof the relationship emerged after 1945. It is likely to prove more stable thanmany revisionists believe.

I illustrate these arguments by tracing how the principle of self-determination was injected into a world of pre-existing sovereign states.After 1919, sovereignty became generally popular, at least in theory.11 Inother words, it was no longer an attribute or possession of a particular rulerbut belonged to the people as a whole. If prescription was out, consent had tobe in. Traditional states could no longer be viewed as so many pieces of realestate. This voluntary transfer of property, to use Hume’s phraseology, posedan immediate question: Which collectives had a right to self-determinationand hence to claim sovereignty for themselves?

The original Western answer to this question was the plebiscite. Whatcould sound simpler than the proposition—let the people decide. But itsfailure was inevitable because as the international lawyer, Ivor Jennings,famously pointed out in 1956, ‘the people cannot decide until someonedecides who are the people’.12 Without putting it in so many words, thiswas presumably what Boutros-Ghali was alluding to in his attempt to headoff run-away state creation at the pass through democratisation. But thefailure did not lead to the obvious, and in my view correct, conclusionthat no objective definition is available; it led to a prolonged and largelyinconclusive debate about the identity and origin of nations.

Inconclusive, perhaps, but not pointless. The debate should not beignored, if only because the rival positions have had an ongoing influenceon the world of practice. The primordialist position, held by those whobelieve that nations have always existed—although often suppressed—andthat their identity is self-evident, has an obvious appeal to nationalists them-selves, particularly if they find themselves trapped within what they regardas an alien polity. But it is the modernist view, advanced by such writers asthe late Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson that points the way to thepractical resolution of the self-determination problem.

They argue that nationalism is essentially a modern phenomenon, thateven when traditional agrarian societies happened to be politically cen-tralised and/or ethnically homogenous, they did not constitute nations inthe modern sense. For Gellner, it was the existence of a literary high cul-ture, diffused widely within the population, which constituted the essentialidentity of a nation. This meant that with the rise of nationalism—that isthe doctrine that political and cultural boundaries should be congruent—only marginal adjustments were necessary. This was the situation along theNorth Atlantic seaboard of Europe where these preconditions were largely



met.13 Elsewhere, in the former colonies of the European powers, and laterin the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, wherever possible, pre-existing admin-istrative boundaries were used to define the international boundaries—andhence territorial identity—of the successor states. Implicit in the modernistargument is the recognition that political identity is a contingent matter.This is the crucial point. It cannot be settled by a rational argument ordemocratic vote.

It was the recognition of this uncomfortable fact by practical men andwomen that led to the gradual emergence of a conventional understandingof national self-determination as European decolonisation; that is, as a onceand for all event, tied in time and space. This idea, codified as the legalprinciple uti possidetis juris, originated in South America in the nineteenthcentury, as a way of putting a stop to an endless round of irredentist disputesand wars, but it was reaffirmed after 1919, again after 1945 and yet againafter 1989.

The main challenge to the conventional understanding has come, notsurprisingly, from secessionists. They believe, after all, that they have beendenied self-determination, after the drafters of the UN Charter had inscribedit as one of the inalienable human rights. But they have made little head-way against the convention except in two cases where special circumstancesprevailed—in Bangladesh in 1971 when the country was ‘liberated’ by theIndian army rather than by the Bangladeshi nationalists themselves, andin Eritrea after the Cold War, when the Soviet Union withdrew its sup-port for the Ethiopian government and cooperated with the Americans inclosing down a secessionist war that had been going on for more than30 years. For a time during the closing days of the Soviet empire it lookedas though the Western powers might substitute democratic criteria for thedecolonisation model, but while continuing to pay lip service to demo-cratic principles, they eventually closed ranks behind the idea that thesuccessor states of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia should be defined bytheir previously internal boundaries. Indeed, in the case of Bosnia, theyexpended huge amounts of diplomatic energy, as well as vast financialresources, to demonstrate that these boundaries could not be changed byforce.

Why are governments, including democratic governments, so deeplyopposed to territorial revision? There is no single or simple answer. Themain difficulties in moving beyond the present position are practical. Threetheoretical answers have been offered, but they all derive from historicalexperience and its interpretation not from a priori reasoning. The first isLincoln’s argument, advanced in the context of the American civil war, thatsecession is equivalent to anarchy and that the only way for a minority toadvance its cause is to work on public opinion so that it will be able totransform itself into the majority at the next election. The second argumentwas Mill’s, namely that in order to preserve democracy in a society divided


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into two major, nationally self-conscious communities, it was preferable topartition the country. His reason was that if this was not done, the twomajor protagonists would seek to capture the State through the ballot box,in order to discriminate against their opponents. The third argument wasadvanced by the maverick British politician, Enoch Powell, during the warsof Yugoslav succession. He maintained that while a nation was an absoluteprerequisite for democracy, nations would be forged in the future, as in thepast, through a process of violent struggle and self-assertion against imposedimperial sovereignty.

These arguments are all plausible under certain circumstances but theyalso demonstrate the dangers of applying the lessons of history out of con-text. Lincoln’s impeccably liberal formula is difficult to apply in countrieswhere there is no democratic tradition or overarching commitment to theconstitution; and where minorities will be permanent because they definethemselves existentially as members of a community rather than as citi-zens, who retain the right to switch loyalties at the ballot box. Mill’s versionis essentially practical rather than humanitarian: he is worried about thewrecking potential of major groups, whose obsessive identity politics mayundermine democracy; but he has little sympathy for the feelings of smallerminorities that lack the capacity to upset the democratic apple cart. Powell’sargument certainly has history on its side, but in so far as it condemns us tolive by the sword, it is both morally repellent and flouts the legal prohibitionin the UN Charter against the use of force except in self-defence.

So, if there is no unambiguous way of resolving the self-determinationproblem, what to do at a time when people everywhere are much more con-scious of their rights, than in the past? The argument in Progress and its Limitsis that inventiveness within the system is a more likely way forward than anyradical recasting of the conventional interpretation of self-determination.

From an empirical and sociological point of view one might argue thatChechyna had a better case for independent statehood than Belarus. Butthe fact that in the Soviet period, Chechyna was part of the Russian Federa-tion and not a putatively independent Soviet Socialist Republic underminedits case in international law. It might be argued that Eritrean and EastTimorese independence point the way towards a new customary right ofsecessionist self-determination, but on the contrary these cases reinforcerather than undermine the conventional interpretation. Eritrea was absorbedinto Ethiopia in 1952 in open defiance of a UN prohibition, and East Timorhad been a Portuguese not a Dutch colony. Independence in both casestherefore upheld the uti possidetis principle. Nonetheless, the Canadian gov-ernment took the precaution of seeking an Advisory Opinion from theWorld Court on whether a unilateral right of secession could be said to exist.The experts consulted said there was not, although they hedged their betsby saying that massive human rights abuse might in some cases create sucha right, a qualification, however, that clearly did not apply to Quebec.14



This view is, of course, open to challenge, and the recognition in February2008 of Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence by the United Statesand European Union may suggest that the commitment to the conventionalinterpretation is weakening. But these recognitions, which are unlikely tobe accepted in the near future by the UN, if only because of Russian objec-tions, have by no means assured Kosovo’s international legitimacy. This willrequire much careful diplomacy and preparation. There is no objection topeaceful partition of a state as the break up of Czechoslovakia in the recentpast demonstrates. But the premature recognition of Kosovo reopens thespectre of ethnic conflict once again threatening the fragile peace that hasbeen established in the Balkans. The Kosovo dilemma is a real one, but thesense of the system, in Hume’s sense that I sketched at the beginning of thischapter, remains firmly on the side of the conventional interpretation.

By inventiveness within the system, I mean the kind of regulatoryframework that the EU has established, which allows new and old mem-ber states alike to express their national identities, sometimes even at thesub-state level, while competing for market share in the global economy.The attachment to the sovereign state does not support the fashionable viewthat the state is in retreat, but it is certainly true that, under the pressuresof globalisation, its competence has narrowed, particularly in the economicfield. Indeed, in a sense the world of virtual states, and of juridical ratherthan empirical sovereignty, is now much wider than when Robert Jacksonfirst coined the term to describe ex-colonies that were effectively wards ofinternational society. There are obvious dangers assuming that the EuropeanUnion is a model for other parts of the world, but, again to echo Hume, thereis no reason why sovereign states in other regions should not prove equallyresourceful and inventive.

Democracy

After the Cold War, a mood of democratic optimism spread throughoutinternational society. It was expressed, as we have already noted, by the Sec-retary General of the United Nations, Boutros-Ghali, and also by the Councilof Europe and the European Union, which insisted that the former com-munist states would have to establish their democratic credentials in orderto join, and by the Commonwealth, which set up a Committee of ForeignMinisters to deal with states that violated the Organisation’s principles. Themood was also enthusiastically endorsed by the United States. AnthonyLake, President Clinton’s Security Advisor, announced that George Kennan’sstrategy of containment was to be replaced by a strategy of enlargement, bywhich he meant ‘the consolidation of democratic and market reform’ worldwide.15 These sentiments raise the questions to which the central part ofProgress and its Limits is devoted: Can the internal constitution of states bedetermined by international society and can international society itself bedemocratised?


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As the reader may by now have come to expect, the attempt to addressthese questions by a demonstration of practical reason is likely to yieldunspectacular and indeed sceptical answers. But, in my view, it remains a bet-ter strategy than allowing hope to triumph over experience. These answersemerge from confronting the debate between the so-called ‘pluralist’ and‘solidarist’ theorists of international society.

The pluralists, amongst whom I count myself, at least up to a point, con-tend that they have had the better of the argument. They base their caseon the carryover of key aspects of the traditional into the contemporaryorder. On the other hand, the solidarists, who believe that a fundamentalmakeover of international society is possible, have not been and are unlikelyto be driven from the field. The reasons are instructive on both sides of theargument.

At first sight one might have expected the nationalisation of internationalsociety after the First World War to have constituted a major normativeshift in the solidarist direction. But if anything it had the opposite effect.Traditional international society was essentially based on a standoff betweenprinces, who agreed to respect each other’s jurisdiction within their ownlands. They might go to war, of course, in which case conquest allowed forthe transfer of territory from one sovereign to another without challengingthe law of coexistence on which the system rested at other times. Popularsovereignty sounded solidarist—it was after all based on the universalist ide-als of the Enlightenment—but it had the effect of sealing the boundaries ofthe state and sacralising territory. Modern territorial disputes can no longerbe resolved by conquest; the strategic facts on the ground may be altered bywar, as they have been, for example, on the Golan Heights, but any final res-olution would require a political agreement between Israel and Syria. As wehave already seen, the absence of any such agreement between the KosovarAlbanians and Serbia continues to hold up Kosovo’s entry into internationalsociety. To this extent the society of states has not only survived, it has beenstrengthened.

The idea of a solidarist, that is, democratic, transformation of internationalsociety is unlikely to face final defeat, however, because another legacy ofthe Enlightenment was to entrench democratic values as the standard oflegitimacy in international society. This did not happen immediately. Themajority of states were no more democratic in the early twentieth centurythan they had been before the eighteenth-century revolutions, but after1919, democracy was accepted as the standard everywhere, even while itwas also accepted that, in most parts of the world, circumstances preventedits full implementation. There were several reasons for democracy’s appeal.One was its association with the most powerful states of the day. Anti-colonial nationalists might oppose first the Pax Britanica and its successorthe Pax Americana, but this was in order to claim their democratic valuesas their own. Another was that the open political systems of Britain and



France allowed nationalists to turn their own values against the metropoli-tan governments in order to force them to transfer power. And finallydemocracy—and it is important to remember that until the end of the ColdWar there was a multi party and a centralist model on offer—was iden-tified with modernity, the holy grail of political elites in all parts of theworld.

Paradoxically, the competition between the two models of democraticmodernisation buttressed the pluralist structure of international societythroughout the Cold War. Conversely, the collapse of one of the mod-els internationalised liberal democracy almost overnight. This developmentraised a question that had never previously been considered relevant to thetheory or practice of international relations but which must be answered ifmulti-party democracy is to be established as a world-wide system of govern-ment. Are there cultural preconditions that must be met before democraticvalues can become embedded in any political system?

My answer to this question is that there are. I attempt to illustrate thisproposition by both ancient and modern example. The first is the famousencounter between Lewis and Clarke and the Missouri Indians, who hadno hereditary chiefs or even the conception of a political class and neededwar as a way of testing the courage of young men and their ability tolead.16 The modern example was the failure of the international commu-nity to resolve the Somali crisis. But much the same argument could beadvanced to explain the difficulties that NATO has faced in its efforts toassist nation and state building in Afghanistan. The point is not that thesesocieties do not understand the concept of democracy; it is that the pas-toral, nomadic or semi-nomadic structure of society favours a clan-based andhighly competitive system, and makes it difficult to establish a centralisedrational bureaucratic state on the Weberian model. In other words, forms oflife matter.

It does not follow that a commitment to democratic values should haveno place in international relations, merely that the democratisation ofinternationial society cannot simply be imposed from outside, even if, as isusually the case, there is a local class of professional intellectuals who favoursuch an outcome. To quote Ernest Gellner, ‘[t]heorists of democracy, whooperate in the abstract, without reference to social conditions, end up with avindication of democracy as a general ideal, but are then bound to concludethat in many societies the ideal is not realisable.’17 The gap between interna-tional aspirations and social reality means that the subject invites hypocrisy,the price, it has been said, that vice pays to virtue. Whether it is worth pay-ing, it seems to me, is a question of judgement not principle, depending onwhether innocent lives can be spared or high levels of arbitrary oppressionreduced.

International law, the bedrock institution of international society, is notwell suited to the discriminatory flexibility that seems to be required if


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democratic values are to be seriously pursued at the international level.According to Professor James Crawford, it has traditionally ‘operated in atleast six deeply undemocratic ways’.18 Since 1989, pressure for change hasconcentrated on two of these, namely that ‘the principle of non interventionextends to protect even non democratic regimes’, and that ‘the princi-ple of self determination is not allowed to modify established territorialboundaries’. These pressures led to much discussion in the early 1990s aboutwhether a right of humanitarian intervention was emerging as a customaryprinciple of international law.

Enthusiasm for this proposition was already in decline by the millen-nium. When Progress and its Limits was published, opinion was dividedover the legality of NATO’s invasion of Kosovo in 1999, and support forregime change on humanitarian grounds has been further reduced by theunpopularity of the war in Iraq, even though that was not initiated forhumanitarian reasons. Although there has been a shift in opinion againstautomatic sovereign immunity, and many still believe that the internationalcommunity has done too little, not too much, for example, in dealing withthe Darfur crisis in the Sudan, the reputation of the United Nations hasundoubtedly been damaged by the willingness of the major powers to actwithout its authority.

There are two grounds for concern about the unilateralist turn that inter-national politics has taken in pursuit of democratic values. The first isthat unauthorised intervention inevitably weakens the prohibition on theuse of force as an instrument of foreign policy, whatever well meaningdemocratic politicians may say to the contrary. The second is the issue ofmoral responsibility, which I examine with reference to the use of economicsanctions as an instrument of democratisation. This may seem a strangeissue to raise in the context of a discussion of attempts to reform inter-national society, but it reveals one of the central contradictions of liberalinternationalism.

In their enthusiasm for economic sanctions, which many liberals believeto be a peaceful form of coercion, they often conveniently forget that sanc-tions are a modern derivative of medieval siege warfare, the purpose ofwhich was to starve the enemy into submission. Sieges were a particularlyunpleasant aspect of traditional warfare but at least the perpetrators acceptedresponsibility for their actions. This is not the case with modern economicsanctions. It is perhaps reasonable to assume that were they to be imposedon a democratic state, citizens would use their electoral power to force theirgovernment to comply. But the same assumption cannot be made with anysafety when the target is a tyrant who controls all the levers of power inhis own hands. When Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, repeatedlyinsisted that Saddam Hussein could end the suffering of the Iraqi people bycomplying with the UN resolutions, so that the sanctions could be lifted, hewas being disingenuous. He knew that the people could not be expected to



rise against the dictator, so they were in effect being made to suffer for theirown good. Sadly, this passing of responsibility onto the victims is character-istic of much shallow liberal thinking in the contemporary world. Indeed,in cases like this, as the UN Secretary General recognised in a report to theSecurity Council in 1996, the cure of democracy can turn out to be worsethan the authoritarian disease.

Fortunately, in most cases, such extreme measures have not been neces-sary, as authoritarianism has been on the defensive in most parts of theworld since 1989. Without challenging the ‘deeply undemocratic’ princi-ples of international law it has proved possible for the United Nationsand other inter-governmental organisations, to support the transition fromauthoritarian to democratic regimes in many countries. Help with writingconstitutions, retraining the judiciary, establishing electoral commissionsand rolls, and monitoring elections should not be dismissed merely becausethey are un-heroic and incremental in their impact.

As Boutros Boutros-Ghali acknowledged, however, such useful measuresare not sufficient. If the democratisation strategy is to have any chanceof striking deep roots, it will also be necessary to revisit the issue ofminority rights. The reasons for this are straightforward: if secessionistself-determination is to be ruled out under the conventional interpreta-tion, then minorities will have to be reassured that their rights, includingtheir right to political participation, will not be ignored if democratic gov-ernment is to be sustained. Unfortunately, minority rights have not hada good press. They were deeply unpopular with the successor states toEurope’s dynastic empires, which were required to provide minority guar-antees as the price of entry into the League of Nations. As a result theywere abandoned in 1945 in favour of inalienable individual rights. Thedrafters of the Universal Declaration believed that these would be suffi-cient as all individuals would be free to associate with any community theychose.

There was nothing wrong with the logic of this argument; the problemwas that where it mattered, no one believed it. Faced with this challengeEuropean organisations have made considerable progress in establishing anon-binding framework for minority protection. The OSCE has even estab-lished a Commissioner for Minorities, with powers to investigate potentialconflicts, receive petitions and make recommendations up to the point whenconflict actually breaks out. This limitation strongly suggests that the spectreof irredentist conflict has not been finally eradicated, even in Europe. Else-where, there is even less inclination to redefine sovereignty. In China andIndia, the two most prominent Asian countries, which seem likely to exercisegreat influence on world politics in the years ahead, the issue of minoritiestends to be viewed as a peculiar European cultural obsession. Indeed, it is inAsia that the solidarist arguments for eroding state sovereignty and territorialintegrity are viewed with most suspicion.


James Mayall 223

If, as the argument of this section suggests, international society can onlybe democratised partially and incrementally, it still remains to ask what, ifanything, the international community should do in the face of massivehuman displacement and inter-communal slaughter of the kind that was adefining characteristic of many conflicts in the decade after the end of theCold War? This is the final theme that I discuss in Progress and its Limits.

Intervention

I will deal with humanitarian intervention, the last of the three themesexamined in the book, more briefly since we have already encountered mostof the relevant arguments in the discussion of Sovereignty and Democracy.To summarise the argument so far, we have seen how the attempt to reformthe society of states in order to guarantee democratic freedoms and humanrights has made only limited progress. This is because of widespread resis-tance to abandoning sovereignty as the basis of the system and to revisingthe prohibition on secessionist self-determination. Furthermore, we havealso seen how the conservatism of international society is not merely reac-tionary but arises, on the one hand, because of the incoherence of nationalself-determination, and, on the other, because dramatically different socialconditions across the globe means that cooperation must necessarily bebased on consensus and coexistence rather than on a specious solidarity thatexperience shows will be honoured in the breach rather than the observance.

Good law must be able to yield, however, to exceptional circumstances. Ifit does not sooner rather than later, it will be held in contempt. The pressureto relieve widespread human suffering arising from oppressive rule, when itcan be done, and more contentiously when it is in the interests of one ormore countries to do so, can no longer always be resisted on the straightfor-ward grounds that, say ethnocide, or even genocide, should be accepted asan internal matter with no implications for international society. Nor has itbeen. Between the first Gulf War and the Kosovo crisis, the UN was involvedin 14 intra-state conflicts in Africa alone, in the majority of which inter-vention was driven by the need to provide humanitarian assistance. Actionagainst Serbian misrule in Kosovo could not be routed through the SecurityCouncil for fear of attracting a Russian, and possibly a Chinese, veto, but itremains true that, moral considerations apart, Milosovic’s policy in Kosovoseriously threatened the stability of the Balkans, and indirectly as a result ofrefugee flows and the contagion of criminal violence, the wider Europeanregion as well.

The traditional view of international society was that it was a self-helpsystem in which governments were responsible for their own survivaland welfare. Democratic governments, which acted irresponsibly, would bethrown out at the next election; the misrule of tyrants would eventuallylead to popular insurrection. The problem is that in an increasingly glob-alised world the consequences of savage misrule are unlikely to be contained



within the state in question. So the liberal dilemma of when to override theconventions of international society cannot always be avoided. This is not anew problem. In A Few Words on Non Intervention, John Stuart Mill provideda plausible defence of humanitarian intervention as part of his justificationof the British conquest of the Indian princely state of Oudh. Essentiallythe argument was that where the destitution and misrule of a nominallyindependent state could be directly traced to the policies of a stronger andprotecting power, the latter could not escape its responsibilities by hidingbehind respect for sovereignty of the misgoverned state.

This justification has not been employed in the international defence ofintervention since the end of the Cold War, presumably because of the dif-ficulty of distinguishing between humanitarian and less worthy motives.Nor has it been used, more surprisingly perhaps, by the Western powers tojustify their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where arguably both the rise ofthe Taliban and of Saddam can be directly traced to Western policies. Butthis would have required them to avoid the temptation discussed in theprevious section to shift responsibility onto the victims. Instead, humanitar-ian crises have been discussed, on the one hand, in terms of the duties ofgovernments to uphold their obligations to respect human rights and thesanctions that they will incur if they do not, and, on the other, the excep-tional circumstances that may be held to justify intervention on an ad hocbasis.

There has been a tendency amongst critics of humanitarian interventionto argue that none of the post-Cold War interventions have been successful.This is not, strictly speaking, true. When intervention followed rather thanaccompanied the negotiation of a political settlement—as in Cambodia,Namibia and Mozambique—UN forces were able to reinforce the work ofhumanitarian agencies and to contribute to political stabilisation. Even insome of the other cases such as Bosnia and Somalia, lives were saved as aresult of the intervention. Nonetheless in most cases where the internationalinvolvement was a consequence of the absence of a serious agreement, inter-national intervention was more likely to become part of the problem thanof the solution.

There were two reasons for this conclusion. The first is that throughoutthe post-Cold War period even when the Security Council was prepared towill desirable ends—for example by defining a humanitarian catastrophe asa threat to international peace and security in order to justify an enforce-ment resolution under Chapter 7 of the Charter—they were seldom willingto resource the operation adequately. The more serious weakness was con-ceptual: the search for what was called at the time a Chapter 6 1/2 solution,that is, a half-way house between peacekeeping, which requires impartialityand the careful building of trust, and enforcement, which requires the iden-tification of an enemy, failed. No such half-way house exists. The Bosnianwar was only brought to an end when the American government took it out


James Mayall 225

of the hands of the UN and changed the local balance of forces by armingthe Bosniaks. Similarly, although the majority opinion on the Kosovo inter-vention was that even if it was moral, it was illegal, the NATO operationnonetheless resolved both of the problems outlined above: there was no con-tradiction between ends and means and there was no need for the force toaim at impartiality.

The underlying problem with humanitarian intervention is that in a post-imperial age, no one wants to accept that it is an imperial project. If thepolitical circumstances of a society are so degraded that its governmenthas become a predator on its own population and by common agreementmust be removed—something that is conceivable but was singularly missingin Iraq—then logically the international community should be prepared toaccept a long-term commitment to its reconstruction. The model should bethe unconditional surrender demanded of Germany and Japan by the vic-torious alliance in 1945. This is not the world we inhabit, so even in theexceptional circumstances where intervention is unavoidable (or at least isnot avoided) there is probably no alternative to a limited liability approachin which exit options are planned at the outset, with all the hostages tofortune that this statement implies. There has been a tendency since themillennium to regionalise peace support (a euphemism for humanitarianintervention) activities. This has obvious attractions but it does not reallyresolve the imperial problem, since those regional powers that are mostlikely to accept the responsibility are the most likely to have their ownpolitical agenda.

Conclusion

The normative conclusion that emerges from my engagement with the his-tory of both the ideas and the practice of international society is, I fear, apessimistic one, viewed from the hopes of progress. This is so whether onetakes the long view or concentrates on the interpretation of more recentevents. But it is not a cynical conclusion. If I appear to be advocating areturn to realism, it is certainly not a version that considers that moralityhas no place in international relations. Indeed, I do not think that we canescape the idea of progress or that we should aspire to do so. As I wrote atthe time, we are stuck with it because it is the coin of democratic politics,providing its underlying ethic as tragedy provided it when the fate of peo-ples was subsumed in the fate of their leaders whose humanity had to playsecond fiddle to their role. The question is how best to progress in a worldwhere the concept itself has been drained of much of its nineteenth-centuryteleological force?

None of the theoretical paradigms—realism, rationalism and revolu-tionism—through which English School authors habitually analyse inter-national relations have provided a satisfactory answer to this question.



I return therefore to where I began by advocating an ethic of prudence. Itis no accident, it seems to me, that David Hume and other Enlightenmentthinkers, who sought to ground their rationalism in empirical experience,devoted so much time to analysing moral reasoning. No one who has beeninvolved in decisions that are weighed down with fateful consequences canafford to ignore the calculation of risks and probabilities. From this point ofview, prudence is a virtue. Without prudence, all visions of the future degen-erate into mere utopia, with all its well-known attendant dangers. Judgingby the passionate conviction with which the US-led coalition went to war inIraq, this lesson has not yet been fully absorbed.


1. I am greatly indebted to the editor for suggesting how I might organise thischapter and indeed for providing much of the material on which the introductorysection is based. It was she who pointed out the similarities between my methodof argument and that of Burke.

2. World Politics: Progress and its Limits (Cambridge: Polity, 2000).3. Essays and Treatises on Various Subjects, 2 Vols (Edinburgh: Bell & Brudlate et.al.,

1825) Essay XXI ‘Of National Character’, p. 195.4. A Treatise of Human Nature (ed.) L. A. Selby-Bigge, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1888) Book

I, Pt. III, ‘Of human knowledge and probability’, p. 108.5. The History of England From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688,

6 Vols (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1983), Vol. 2, p. 525.6. History of England, Vol. 3, pp. 76–77.7. A Treatise on Human Nature, Book III, Section XI, ‘Of the law of Nations’, p. 265.8. Ibid.9. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Agenda for Peace, paragraphs 17 and 18. For text, see

A. Roberts and B. Kingsbury (eds) United Nations, Divided World: The UN’s Rolesin International Relations, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), Appendix A,pp. 468–498.

10. Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History’, The National Interest, Summer 1989.11. It had arguably become so in Western Europe during the nineteenth century.12. W. I. Jennings, The Approach to Self-Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1956), p. 56.13. E. Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals (London: Hamish

Hamilton, 1994), p. 113.14. Department of Justice, Canada, backgrounder, 27 February 1997.15. Anthony Lake, ‘From Containment to Enlargement’, Dispatch, 4/39 (1993).16. For an account of this episode, see, E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage (New York,

Touchstone: Simon and Schuster, 1996), pp. 188–189.17. E. Gellner, Conditions of Liberty, p. 87.18. James Crawford, Democracy in International Law, Inaugural Lecture, 5 March 1993

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 8–10.

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August 25, 2008 9:51 MAC/THIS Page-240 9780230_547155_14_ind01

Index

In this index figures are indicated in italics, enclosed in parentheses, following thepage number. Works are entered in italics.

abolition of slave trade, 99absence of government

consequences, 169–70, 171ES emphasis on, 169

Activists Beyond Borders (Keck/Sikkink),67–8

Adler, Immanuel, 61advocacy network, transnational, 67–8Afghanistan, 220, 224Africa, 223Agenda for Peace (UN), 214Ahliyah legal system, 195–6, 200Alexandrowicz, C.H., 42, 98‘Alternative Paths to World Order’

(Bull), 139American Civil War, 98–9, 216Anarchical Society, The (Bull), 24, 39, 41,

44, 46, 47, 51–2, 65, 113–16, 125–45anarchy, 58, 87–8, 128, 130, 132, 161,

174, 216ancient Greeks, 40–1, 43Anderson, Benedict, 215appeasement, 48–9, 158arms control

Bull’s work, 9, 48, 176see also nuclear weapons

Arms Race, The (Noel-Baker), 176Ashley, K., 42, 90Ashley, Richard, 42, 90Austin, John, 176

Bain, Will, vii, 11, 12, 148–63balance of power

and the American Civil War, 98in Bullian thought, 137Butterfield’s theory, 9, 40post-Westphalian ascendance,

117–18in Wightian thought, 117

Bangladesh, 216behaviour, influence of law on, 170–1

Beitz, Charles, R., 13Bellamy, Alex, 3Beyond the Anarchical Society (Keene),

119–20bipolarity, 45, 50Blair, Tony, 221Bosnia, 216, 224–5Boucher, David, 89–92Bourdieu, Pierre, 17Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 214, 215,

218, 222Brewin, Christopher, 8Britain, 7, 16, 98–9, 125, 219

judicial reform in Egypt, 196–200occupation of Egypt, 192–3

British Committee of InternationalTheory, 5, 39, 65

Brown, Chris, 13Bull, Hedley, 2, 10, 13, 14, 15, 24,

25, 36, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46–8, 49,50–2, 59, 64, 65, 82, 88, 89,113–16, 120, 125–45, 148, 149–52,159–60, 161, 167, 169, 172–3,174–5, 177

Burke, Edmund, 43, 212–13Bush administration, exceptionalism,

141–3Bush, George W., 152–3, 158Butterfield, Herbert, 7, 9, 11, 34, 39, 40,

41, 44, 45, 51, 52, 65, 148, 152–5,157, 159–60

Buzan, Barry, vii, 10, 14, 16, 46, 78–9,82, 83, 85, 95, 104

Cambodia, 224capitalism

interpretive view, 111‘Protestant ethic’ thesis, 110–12, 115,

116, 118in Weberian thought, 14, 108

capitulations system, 192

240


Index 241

Carr, E.H., 64, 158, 171causal analysis, 130causal explanation, Weber’s

view, 109causality

evidence of ES interest, 47–8push/pull, 49Wight’s arguments, 48

causal theorizing, 53–4causation

Bull’s definition, 47–8rules and norms and, 54

central government, absence of, seeabsence of government

Chamberlain, Neville, 152Chechnya, 34, 217Chile, 142China, 44–5, 133, 222Churchill, Winston, 158‘Civic Republicanism and

Self-Determination’ (Navari), 13civilisation, contrast between toleration

and, 119civitas maxima, 117Clark, Ian, 99classical approach

Bull’s defence, 2, 24, 66Bull’s embrace, 149–50central themes, 27, 34–7criticisms, 25, 53term analysis, 21, 23theoretical vocabulary, 36

codes of conductin Hellenic system, 40–1see also rules of conduct

Colas, Alejandro, 190Cold War, 7, 15, 43, 44, 46,

144, 181Cold War system, 53, 213colonialism, 96colonial process, in Kennedy’s

theory, 191communication, as indicator of

international status, 16Community of States, The, 8comparative analysis, 2, 52concept formation, in Weberian

theory, 107Condition of States, The, 8, 13conduct, rules of, see rules of conduct

Congo, 142Congress of Mantua, 46consciousness

in methodological pluralistapproach, 93

nature of historical, 49constructivism

axes of debate, 61–4Foucauldian/Habermasian

variations, 62levels of analysis, 63methodology discourse, 63–4and normative theory, 67–9pluralist/solidarist debate, 69–72resemblance to ES, 58Reus-Smit’s arguments, 3sociological institutionalist

roots, 61–2Wendt as key text, 60

Crawford, James, 221Critical Legal Studies, 176cultural discrimination, 119Czechoslovakia, 158

Darfur, 221democracy, 218–23

preservation of, 216–17and US foreign policy, 142

Deutsch, Karl, 16diplomacy, 17

historical vs new, 40and international law, 169and international order, 36, 136Western practice, 43, 117

Diplomatic Investigations(Butterfield/Wight), 39

diplomatic representationas indicator of international status, 16and international law, 169

discrimination, racial/cultural, 119dominion, 88Donelan, Michael, 7Dunne, Tim, 7, 14, 51, 53, 58, 60, 65, 66

East Timor, 217economics, 95–6, 107economic sanctions, 221–2


242 Index

Egypt, 189–90, 192–205Ahliyah legal system, 195–6, 200British occupation, 192–3British power and judicial reform,

196–200Brunyate report, 199debt repayment, 195independence declaration, 202legal borrowing, 192–205Milner Mission, 200–2Mixed Court system, 192–3, 194, 195,

197, 200, 201Montreux Convention, 203nationalist movement, 202–3Shari’a, 195strategies and legal processes, 193–6treaty solution, 201–3

Emancipation Proclamation, 99empire, 87–8, 141, 202empiricism, 210, 211–12English School

American criticisms, 126–7axes of debate, 64–7growth in interest in, 78–9methodology, see methodologyoverview, 125

English School approaches, lacunae, 3,13–18, 100

environment conference (UN), 6Epp, Roger, 66Eritrea, 216, 217ethics

international, 21, 26, 28–30political, 21relation between value systems

and, 110of responsibility, 29, 34of scholarship, 24situational, 65, 69–72of statecraft, 27, 65

Europeestablishment of hierarchical world

order, 96(Fig.4. 11)financial viability model, 189minority protection, 222OSCE, 34, 222

European state-systemES development account of, 88impact, 95uniqueness, 10

evaluative interpretation, culturalsignificance and value relevance,106–8

exceptionalism, in US foreign policy,141–3

Falk, Richard, 176Few Words on Non Intervention,

A (Mill), 224Finnemore, Martha, 1, 2, 14, 15, 45, 59,

61, 126First World War, 198Footsteps into the Future (Kothari), 46–7force, use of, see use of forceforeign policy, force as instrument

of, 221foundation and process, Holsti’s

theories, 10framework, theoretical, see theoretical

frameworkFrance, 140Frost, Mervyn, 8, 54Fukuyama, Francis, 215

game theory, 9, 40Gattungsbegriff (class concept), 107Gellner, Ernest, 215, 220Glaser, B., 42Global Covenant, The (Jackson), 65global warming, 49Gong, Gerrit, W., 97–8Gonzalez-Palaez, Ana, 95government, absence of, see absence of

governmentGrader, Sheila, 44Grawemeyer Prize, 67Great Britain, see BritainGrotius, Hugo, 117, 139Guatemala, 142

Haas, Peter, 6Halle, Louis J., 23Halliday, F., 87Hall, Rodney, 63Hart, H.L.A., 115, 169hegemony, 25, 48, 87–8, 97, 128, 133,

137, 139–40, 143Hellenic system, codes of conduct, 40–1Herodotus, 40–1Higgins, Rosalyn, 176


Index 243

historyin Bullian thought, 139–43, 149–52ES orientation towards, 4–5ES and the theory of, 53, 87–8ES typology, 10–11as fable (Oakeshottian approach),

154–9as interim knowledge (Butterfieldian

approach), 152–4interpretation, causation and

axiological affinity, 109–12lessons of, see lessons of historyplace in ES thought, 148as speculation (Bullian approach),

149–52‘whig’, 153

History of England (Hume), 211Hitler, Adolf, 140, 158Hobbesian elements

persistence of, 139–40in US foreign policy, 142

Hoffmann, Stanley, 34Hollis, M., 42, 81Holsti, Kalevi, J., vii, 10, 13, 14, 125–6homo sociologicus/homo economicus, 9, 44Hopf, Ted, 61humanitarian intervention, 65, 223–5human rights

Bull on, 50–1as indicator of international status, 16of minorities, 222UN commission, 182Wheeler’s work, 8

Hume, David, 13, 210–11, 212, 213, 214,215, 218, 226

Hurrell, Andrew, 182Hurst, Cecil, 200Hussein, Saddam, 158, 221, 224

Ian Clark, 99, 220ideal types, 5, 54

and causal explanation, 110existence of multiple, 108formation process, 106–7purpose, 107–8

India, 222institutionalisation

Buzan’s theories, 16, 46in Wightian thought, 50

institutionsBull’s definition, 137international, see international

institutions, in Bullian thoughtinstrumental/non-instrumental

behaviour, 82–3interdependence, 47, 49, 212international ethics, 21, 26–30international institutions, in Bullian

thought, 136–9international law

in Bullian thought, 169, 172–3courts and tribunals, 181criticisms of ES readings, 175–80declaratory tradition, 178–9and discriminatory flexibility, 220–1ES approach, 167–85as instrument of social change, 169–70and lack of solidarity, 174Manning’s view, 172, 173–4normative framework, 168norm change, 182–3as process, 176–7reference groups, 183–4the role of power, 180–1security and, 171sociological approach, 168–9state compliance, 173–4and state consent, 174–5

international orderBull’s selection of constituent

elements, 129–30concept analysis, 115durability of Bull’s explanation, 144–5

international relationsas craft discipline, 32–7ES and the interpretation of, 112–18

international societies, Buzan’scontinuum, 83 (fig.4. 3)

international societyin Bullian thought, 134–6Bull’s role in the development of the

concept, 127concept analysis, 134–6defining features, 169–75Gong’s argument, 97–8as historical phenomenon, 189levels of analysis perspectives, 85–6,

86(fig.4.6–7)maintenance, 131–4


244 Index

international society – continuedin pluralist theory, 70–2role, 113–14understanding the ‘spirit’ of, 117–18warp and weft, 70Wight’s description, 45

International Society and its Critics(Bellamy), 3

From International to World Society(Buzan), 10

interpretive sociology, Weber’s, seeWeberian interpretive sociology

interventioneffects of unauthorised, 221legality of Kosovan, 225necessity of, 223success of post-Cold War, 224Wheeler’s book on, 65

Inventing International Society (Dunne), 65Iran, 142Iraq, 158, 221, 224, 225irrationality, 47, 112

Jackson, Robert, vii, 1, 3, 15–17, 21–37,42, 43, 59–60, 65, 71, 82, 167,177–9, 218

James, Alan, 14, 167, 169, 171–2,176, 185

Japan, 16Jennings, Ivor, 176, 215Jepperson, R.L., 59Jones, Dorothy V., 171Jones, Roy, 1, 41, 47, 171justice, 26, 34, 43, 59, 61, 69, 89,

105, 117–18, 128, 144, 168, 196,201–2, 214

Kahn-Freund, Otto, 190, 191Kaplan, Morton, 54Katzenstein, Peter, 59–61, 63Keck, Margaret, 67–8, 71, 126Keegan, John, 158Keene, Edward, vii, 5, 13, 14, 96, 98,

119–20Keens-Soper, Maurice, 17Kellogg-Briand Pact, 171Kennan, George, 218Kennedy, Duncan, 191Keohane, Robert, 1, 11, 161Klotz, A., 61

Koskenniemi, Martti, 176Kosovo, 180, 218, 219, 221, 223, 225Kothari, Rajni, 46–7Krasner, Stephen, D., 54, 58, 62, 80Kratochwil, Friedrich, 60, 64

lacunae, in ES approaches, 3, 13–18, 100Lake, Anthony, 218Landes, David, 193law

legal reception theory, 190–2potential impact, 170–1see also international law

Lawler, Peter, 13Law of Nations, 214Law of Peoples, The (Rawls), 8League of Nations, 171, 222legal borrowing, 191

Egypt and, 192–205legal positivism, influence of 19th/20th

century, 176legal reception, theory of, 190–2lessons of history, 153–4, 158–9,

162, 217Lewis and Clarke, 220liberalism, 87, 142Lincoln, Abraham, 99, 216Linklater, Andrew, 59, 90, 150Little, Richard, vii, 3–4, 5, 10–12, 14, 52,

53, 65–6, 78–100, 95London School of Economics (LSE),

7–8, 176

Machiavelli, Niccolo, 31–2machstaat (power state), 8Maitland, Frederic William, 148Malinowski, Bronislaw, 7Manning, C. A. W., 7, 127, 167, 169,

172–4, 176, 179, 183–5Marxism, 87Mayall, James, vii, 13, 59, 70, 209–26McDougal, Myers, S., 176Mearsheimer, John J., 98Mendlovitz, Saul, 176methodological pluralism

in Boucher’s approach, 89–90divergent approaches relying on,

91(Fig.4.9)limits of, 5–10in Linklater’s approach, 90, 91


Index 245

meaning of, 79narrowing the research agenda, 80–1Wendt’s interpretation, 92–4

methodologyin Bull’s work, 144constructivist discourse, 63–4overview, 3–5primary sources of ES, 39

methods, and issue areas, 10–12Meyer, John, 61Mill, John Stuart, 34, 216–17Milner Mission, 200–2Milosovic, Slobodan, 223minority rights, 222Mixed Court system, 192–3, 194, 195,

197, 200, 201Montreux Convention, 203moral action, 59, 64, 69, 72moral choice, 28–9, 34, 72morality, 27, 69, 89, 116, 178, 225moral order, 117–18Morgenthau, Hans, 34, 120Morocco, 190Mozambique, 224Munich Agreement, 158mutual deterrence, 44, 45, 51

Namibia, 224Napoleon I, Emperor of the

French, 140Nardin, Terry, 11, 15, 157, 167, 177,

178, 179nationalism, 202–3, 214–18NATO, 17, 220–1, 225Navari, C. B., vii, 1–18, 39–55neoliberalism, 79neorealism, 79, 81, 84New Haven School, 176, 177NGOs

local vs transnational, 68Western agenda, 182

Noel-Baker, Philip, 176non-state actors

primacy displacement, 71role in norm development, 182

normative inquirydetachment/engagement, 24–6pluralistic approach, 26practical ethics, 28–30practice and theory, 30–2

purpose, 24into world politics, 21–32

normative rules, typology of, 171normative theory, and constructivism,

67–9normativity, term analysis, 210norm literature, second-wave, 6norms

concept analysis, 22and state behaviour, 6study of, 21–4see also rules of conduct

nuclear weapons, 9, 29, 44, 47, 141see also arms control

Oakeshott, Michael, 11, 15, 149, 154–61,177, 178

Okawara, Nobuo, 61Onuf, Nicholas, 126Onuma, Yasuaki, 170order

Bull’s understanding, 128–9Bull’s values of world, 114–16constituent elements, 129–30durability of Bull’s explanation, 144–5maintenance of, 131–3see also international order; world

orderOSCE (Organisation for Security and

Cooperation in Europe), 34, 222Ottoman Empire, 193, 201Outer Space Treaty (1967), 142

pacta sunt servanda (respect for treatyobligations), 114, 115

Pact of Paris, 130Participant Standpoint, 41–2, 43Pax Americana, 219Peloponnesian war, 30, 46pendulum metaphor, Watson’s, 87–8,

87(fig.4.8)pluralism, methodological, see

methodological pluralismpluralist-solidarist quarrel, 16–17Political Community and the North Atlantic

Area (Deutsch), 16political ethics, 21political scientist, role of the, 26


246 Index

political theoryconcept analysis, 30Skinner approach, 9–10

Popper, Karl, 21positivism, 2, 8, 22, 54–5, 60, 64, 66,

90, 94, 98, 126, 156, 176, 211–12Powell, Enoch, 217power

importance in ES explanations, 9role of, 180–1

power balancerequirements for maintaining, 51–2see also balance of power

practical reasoning, 3, 8, 13, 60, 212practice

development of notion of, 2empirical exploration, 12–13and ethics, 28–30telic vs causal notions, 17–18and theory, 30–2Turner’s ‘telic’ notion, 17Wight’s recommendations, 43

praxis, 43, 44Price, Richard, 61, 62, 70Prince, The (Machiavelli), 31–2Progress and its Limits (Mayall), 217,

218, 221‘Protestant ethic’ thesis, 110–12, 115,

116, 118public opinion, 40, 42, 49push/pull process, 49

quantification, 66quantum physics, 93Quebec, 217

racial discrimination, 119Radcliffe-Brown, A.R., 7rationalism, 36, 90, 225–6Rawls, John, 8, 27, 29reasoning, practical, 3, 8, 13, 60, 212Reason of States, The, 8Reformation, 111Rengger, Nicholas, 132, 144Reus-Smit, Christian, 3, 13, 58–73revolutionary model, Bull’s account,

46–7rights espousal

Bull’s discussion, 50–1see also human rights

Roberson, B. A., 11, 12, 54,189–205

Rome, 41–2Rousseau, J.-J., 25, 139Ruggie, John, Gerard, 60, 63, 64rules of conduct

ES focus, 10Keene on, 5–6Navari on, 4and patterns of behaviour, 51in system/society distinctions, 14–15see also codes of conduct; norms

Saddam Hussein, 158, 221, 224sanctions, as siege warfare, 221–2Saving Strangers (Wheeler), 65‘scientific approach’, Bull’s

denunciation, 149Scott, J. H., 194Security Council (UN), 182–3, 214, 224security dilemma, 51security, and international law, 171self-conceptions, 7, 12, 39, 42self-defence, 27, 141self-determination, 116–17,

214–17, 222–3self-government, 198–9self-interest, 27, 82, 132self-understandings, 2, 4, 8, 15, 62Shari’a, 120, 191–2, 194–5, 204Shaw, Martin, 144siege warfare, sanctions as, 221–2Sikkink, Kathryn, 67, 68, 71, 126Skinner, Quentin, 9, 42slave trade, abolition of, 99Smith, Adam, 211social change, international law as

instrument of, 169–70Social Theory of International Politics

(Wendt), 60Social Theory of Practices, The (Turner), 17societas/universitas, 178sociology, Weber’s interpretive,see

Weberian interpretive sociologySomalia, 224sovereign states

international society formation, 65in pluralist theory, 70


Index 247

sovereignty, 214–18in ideal type construction, 106Krasner’s challenge, 54–5mutual recognition, 114

Soviet Union, 43, 44, 45, 140–1, 216Spegele, Roger D., 1, 89Stanford School, the, 61state

Boutros-Ghali’s arguments, 214Hume’s arguments, 214Rousseau’s view, 25Wight on origins of the modern, 50

state-centricity, of ES theorists, 8–9state sovereignty, 28state-systems

classic statements, 41comparative analysis, 52–3European,see European state-systempersistence of regional, 95

statistical analysis, Bull’s rejection, 113Steve, 42Stirk, Peter, 13Stivachtis, Yannis, 190Strauss, A., 42Suez Canal, 193Suganami, Hidemi, 47–8, 53, 59, 80,

150–1system/community/society contrasts,

15–16system/society distinctions, 14–15, 45Systems of States (Wight), 39

Taliban, 224Taming the Sovereigns (Holsti), 144territorial revision, governmental

opposition to, 216–17terrorism, 63Thailand, 16Theophylact of Simocatta, 41–2theoretical framework

embrace of history, 95historical and geographical scope,

95(Fig.4.10)levels of analysis perspective,

84(fig.4.4)main elements of ES’s, 81–2multidimensional aspects, 82, 83

theoretical vocabulary, derivation, 36

theoriesKrasner’s typology, 80(fig.4.1)Wendt’s typology, 81(fig.4.2), 85

theory of history, Watson’s metaphoricalpendulum, 87(fig.4.8)

Theory of International Politics (Waltz), 84,85, 128

Thinkers of the Twenty Years’ Crisis(Wilson), 1, 48

Thoughts on the Cause of the PresentDiscontents (Burke), 212

Thucydides, 30, 33, 35, 36toleration, 25, 96, 119, 178transnational advocacy network, 67–8treaties, ‘aspirational’, 170tribunals, international, 181trusteeship, 12, 162Twenty Years’ Crisis, The (Carr), 158

UN Charter, 213understanding, Hollis/Smith concept,

42–3UNESCO, 182United Kingdom, see BritainUnited Nations

conflict involvement, 223damage to, 221and declaratory tradition, 179environment conference, 6and international law, 174, 179

United Nations Charter, 129United States, 43, 44, 45, 98

ES critiques, 126–7exceptionalism, 141–3foreign policy, 141–3norm scholarship, 6

universal monarchy, 128UN Security Council, 182–3, 214, 224use of force, 27, 129–31, 169–70, 200,

217, 221uti possidetis juris, 216

values, 26Versailles Settlement, 118Verstehen, 42–3, 105Vietnam, 158Vigezzi, Brunello, 5, 7Vincent, John, 8, 13, 59, 126violence, 52, 137


248 Index

Waever, Ole, 42, 44, 60Waltz, Kenneth, 14, 44, 48, 84, 85, 128Walzer, Michael, 34war

in Bull’s work, 9, 137–9causes of, 8and ethics of best choice, 71and hegemony, 128historical perspective, 161–2and international order, 114, 128,

137, 139irrationality of, 47justification, 224just vs holy, 40and lack of solidarity, 174in Missouri Indian society, 220Noel-Baker’s view, 176normative theories, 35as policy instrument, 47relation between social change and, 11

Watson, Adam, 10, 87–8, 90–1, 97, 116,120, 190–1

Weberian interpretive sociologyES interpretive comparisons, 112–18evaluative interpretation, 106–8, 111historical interpretation, 109–12method, 105–6‘Protestant ethic’ thesis, 110–12, 115,

116, 118Weber, Max, 5, 14, 34, 54, 105Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st

Duke of, 31

Wendt, Alexander, 5, 41, 58–60,63–4, 66, 67, 79, 81, 85, 92–4, 100,104, 161

Western state-system, Wight ondevelopment of, 50

‘Western values’ (Wight), 117, 119Westphalian system, 5, 8, 46, 213Wheeler, Nicholas, 8, 13, 17, 59, 60,

65, 180‘whig’ history, 153Wight, Martin, 2, 7, 10, 15, 25–6, 36, 39,

40–1, 43–4, 45, 46, 48, 52, 70, 87,89, 90, 92, 93–4, 97, 104, 105, 117,119, 120, 127, 148

Williams, John, 13Williams, Paul, 17Wilson, Peter, vii, 1, 11, 48, 167–85Wohlstetter, Albert, 44Wolfers, Arnold, 34world order, Bull’s values of, 114–16World Order Models Project, 176world politics, 21, 24–9, 34–5, 63–4, 69,

72, 82, 90, 105, 114, 118–19, 131,173, 175, 222

normative inquiry into, 21–32understanding the practical ethics of,

29–30world society, 3–5, 10, 66, 68–9, 71, 79,

82–6, 88–9, 91, 95, 99, 100, 104–5,127, 133–5

Bull’s concerns, 88changing elements, 135(Fig.6.2)

WTO (World Trade Organisation), 12

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Theorising International Society - Yolaspmehazem.yolasite.com/resources/Theorising International...4.2 Wendt’s typology of the methodological positioning of IR theories 81 4.3 Buzan’s